Dahlia Evans & the Broken Bridge
by Forensica X
Summary: Assumed dead, the last Potter grows up an orphan until she finds a home with the Grangers. The family explores magic together, but not all is wonder and enchantment. A killer stalks the streets of Crawley, and the Dark Lord isn't as gone as everyone thinks. Fem!Harry/Hermione. POC!Hermione. Slytherin!Hermione. Grey!Dumbledore. Violence & Suggestive Themes.
1. The Price

-Forward-

I know you probably want more All Hail the Time Lord's Son, but a bunny hopped into my room carrying a Fem!Harry bug so I thought I'd give it a shot. As to pairings, the first part will be James/Lily with a bit of sexy-but-not-citrusy fluff, but later on you can expect a whole slew of teenage romances. I've created varied, alternate universe portrayals (and therefore sometimes out-of-original-character) of characters. These may include deviations from canon in ideology, demographics, races, genders, sexualities (the entire spectrum of LGBTQI), etc.

I will make it a point to respond to questions I see in reviews, so please do sign in or at least leave your username for me. My sounding board and beta-by-function-if-not-name doesn't read me for typos, so if you come across technical errors, please send me a private message. I appreciate your fastidious inclusion of those in reviews, too, but I read them more for opinions and have lost track of a correction more than once. Unless there's an anonymous comment I feel very important to address, I will not be using Author's Notes to respond to reviews, so again, log in or leave your username.

That being said, I don't want to hear complaints about the choices in pairings, the genders, sexualities, etc., of the characters as I portray them unless there's a plot reason you see in **this** fiction contrary to said choice working. If you want to tell me you didn't like something, please give me your rationale based on my story because 'I hated this because it's not how I want it' doesn't really help me improve. Not your cup of tea? There's a whole cabinet full of your preferred flavour under the Search function.

Thanks so much for reading, reviewing, and sticking with me through my crazy. Your praise and constructive criticism have helped me improve in more ways than you'll ever know.

* * *

Chapter One - The Price

* * *

 **October 1979**

" _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord shall mark our saviour as his equal, but the child shall wield power the Dark Lord does not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."_

The spectral projection of the wide-eyed, beaded, shawl-draped woman spun slowly over a silvery basin, whose cool glow bathed its operator in harsh light and cast the darkened office around him into gloom. The lines etched into his time-furrowed face stood out in stark relief, and the sunspots scattered over his brow and chin seemed like ink splotches on bleached parchment. His icy blue eyes, shadowed beneath a heavy brow, glinted dully from their deep-set sockets.

"Oh, Ariana," he murmured to the shadows and the sleep feigning portraits lining the walls. "I know of two children who should come into the world by July's end. I think their sweet souls deserve far more than such a fate; and yet, I hold the lives of thousands in my hands."

An ethereal blonde with wide blue eyes and a placid smile blinked sweetly back at him from the ovular, silver frame perched near the right corner of his cluttered desk. The construction of oils, pigments and canvas tilted her head as if to listen but gave no advice.

"Can our world afford to wait for the chosen one's maturity?" he sighed as he examined her innocent face. "Who dies if we continue as we are? How many more of our friends and children shall we lose?"

For the first time in a very long while, the wizened headmaster felt at a loss. The conflict had grown from ideological disagreement to civil war. The ministry laid in shambles, brought to its knees by infighting and weak, inconsistent leadership. Soul-sucking monsters roamed the isles. Giants stormed through the countryside decimating forests and villages indiscriminately. Where once the conflict lay between the Aurors and the Death Eaters, near every wizard and witch fought one another for the right to keep on living.

On one side, so-called Purists decried the blasphemies of the muggleborn population, claiming a conspiracy to undermine the time-honoured traditions and mores of an ancient culture. They called it Erasure, and they took up arms to protect the continuation of their religious practices, their law, and the very structure of their society. Within their number, many proposed the complete eradication of any magical borne of non-wizards, as these were sure agents of their destruction. In their view, the liberal, civilly disobedient muggleborn had begun a blood-based feud built upon a history of violence birthed in the fallout of the Second World War. It was the Purists' belief that these interlopers sought to steal the rewards of the Pureblood's birth by redistributing wealth, rewriting the laws to restrict time-honoured practices and traditions for the sake of a biased morality, and weakening wizarding bloodlines for the purpose of abolishing the Statute of Secrecy. To further strengthen and protect their world, Purists further believed it best to marry only amongst witches and wizards of established bloodlines, or in other words, with persons claiming magical grandparents.

Still others advocated Separatism as the solution. These proposed the choice of adoption for magical children upon their first detection, along with the obliviation of any knowledge of the children's existence from those who knew them. In the Separatists' mind, no magical should ever bear the burden of muggle upbringing. They claimed any good parent would see reason and allow their child to be taken. The obliviation would follow the adoption (without the parents' foreknowledge, of course) to remove any possibility of exposure to unsavoury muggle influence.

The most moderate of the Separatists, who encompassed a slightly larger percentage of the wizarding population, argued against the idea of kidnapping, even from Muggles. After all, were not the bonds of love between a parent and child tantamount to wizards' traditional family beliefs? These folk thought it most prudent to present the facts outright to the parents involved. They envisioned a system in which the first incidence of accidental magic resulted in a candid talk, wherein the importance of secrecy would be established and the necessity for magical schooling imparted. Muggleborn children would then learn the structure of their new world amidst other magical children of their ilk. They would attend these 'Centres for Muggleborn Assimilation' by day until their matriculation to Hogwarts or another reputable magical institution. At their majority, they would be given the choice: take vows of fealty and accept citizenship in the wizarding world, pay to expatriate to another magical nation, or return to muggle society with wands snapped, memories altered, and magic bound.

These vocally dissatisfied groups comprised a third of the wizarding population, and though outnumbered, claimed the deepest coffers from which to fund an extended conflict.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, thousands of men, women and children who identified as muggleborn, called themselves friends of muggleborn, or had descended from a muggleborn, muggle parent, or grandparent, comprised nearly half the wizarding world's population. They fought for equal treatment under the law, and for the right to live happily with their inborn magicks.

The remaining portion, who held no interest in political discourse and simply wished to continue their lives in peace, were caught in the middle with every party demanding allegiance. If the so-called neutrals would not stand up for what was good and moral, the others argued, what right did they have to remain in their world?

Despite the deep and bitter fault lines among these demographics, all had lost. Regardless of belief or background, everyone lived in fear. Save for a few zealots, it was impossible to tell whose colours one wore, after all, and spells often missed their intended targets when fighting broke out on public streets.

Ironically, the aged headmaster thought his fellow wizards feared the wrong things when it came to the most likely outcome of their civil war.

The Purists had not imagined an exponential shrinking of the magical population, after all, despite their questionable reasoning. Fewer magical children had been born to magical families, and their children bore only one or two pregnancies to term. The previous war, too, had decimated innumerable bloodlines and extinguished many promising new wizards and witches before they had the chance to procreate. Fifty-six million, three hundred and fifty-seven thousand muggles outnumbered the twenty thousand some magicals at a ratio of two thousand, eight hundred and seventeen to one.

Of their small population, only the older generations claimed reliable competency in offensive or defensive magic thanks to Tom Riddle's curse, not to speak of each witch or wizard's inclination to fight. Within these and the subsequent generations, many muggleborn had long tired of the prejudice rampant in Britain's ancient magical society. Beneath the threat of death, torture, or the loss of their very identities, most fled for kinder climes. What motivation had they to remain when America, India, Australia, and other lands held no such compunctions against first-generation wizards?

Those who stayed had no other option available to them. They lacked the funds, or they faced the decision of leaving loved ones behind if they fled. These fought bitterly against their fellow magicals, and each day grew bloodier. As a result, every battle brought greater scrutiny to their small, peculiarly powerful subset of humanity as the violence spread beyond their secrecy wards and repelling charms. Conspiracy theories ran rampant in muggle media for every downed bridge or decimated village. Even parts of London were not unscathed. Many incidents were dubbed 'communist terrorist attacks.'

Albus Dumbledore was not the fool some old wizards were.

He had worked alongside muggles in their war while fighting his own against Grindelwald's army of Nazi wizards and their hellish conjurations. He knew the power of muggle artillery, and he was intimately acquainted with the horrors scientific minds could unleash on their fellow human beings. He had been among those to liberate both magical and muggle death camps, and he had volunteered his skills to clean up the nuclear waste of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima in hopes of setting the crater on its path to recovery. He knew better than to underestimate those who lacked magic.

Despite what his colleagues and peers thought, the wizarding world remained beneath the sovereignty of Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, and in light of their cooperation during the War, She and Her muggle government knew well the power of wizards. Needless to say, they were not amused, and their promises to bring the 'communist terrorists' to heel were a not-so-subtle threat.

Either he acted to end the conflict before Her Majesty and Prime Minister Trudeau lost their collective patience, or he stayed his hand and exposed their world to the risk of extinction at worst, and total societal collapse at best. He thought they might find a way to stop the violence and the tyrant who lit the powder keg, but likely not within the time constraints placed upon Minister Bagnold by her muggle counterpart. And if, Merlin forbid, the Dark Lord Voldemort ended the war on his terms, it would not be long into his ruthlessly imposed 'peace' until the megalomaniac poked the sleeping lion that was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He dared not imagine what would remain of the naïve and ignorant wizarding populace in that event.

Dumbledore expelled a long breath through his hooked nose, and his overlong moustache tickled his upper lip. Absently, he waved his wand at the offending facial hair, and the stray whiskers promptly smoothed together as if waxed into tameness. The wizard steepled his fingers over his folded knee as he considered the options. For so long, they had sought an answer, and as if hearing their desperate pleas, the Fates, in their curious wisdom, had delivered unto him the Blind Seer Trelawney.

He wondered whether history would forgive the sacrifice of a child and his family for the good of thousands – perhaps millions – if he took into account the muggles affected if Voldemort should win. He shuddered at the thought of the legacy he would leave: Albus Dumbledore, the man who allowed the destruction of the United Wizarding Britain. The path to their salvation tasted of betrayal, though, and neither outcome soothed his conscience.

The headmaster glanced at the clock.

A decision needed to be made. By the lateness of the hour, Severus Snape would have been expected at home. The gaunt, dark-haired boy continued his spell-induced slumber on the chaise nearby, where Dumbledore had deposited him upon his discovery at the door.

He needed time.

Dumbledore stood slowly from his velvet chair and crossed to the chaise. Fawkes made an uneasy warble as his human carefully wove a memory spell. Using his not inconsiderable skill in legilimency, the headmaster rewrote the events of the evening in Severus Snape's mind. He would remember hearing only part of the prophecy before Aberforth expertly removed him from his establishment, after which he'd continued on to the castle for his own interview. Dumbledore had met him, conducted their business, and assured him he would consider his bid for the job.

His work done within the boy's mind, the headmaster levitated the professor to the seat in front of his desk, brightened the lights throughout the room, and returned the ghostly seer to the silver swirl below her. Another flick of his wand sent the pensieve back to its usual resting place. He checked the Slytherin's memory one last time to ensure the details were in place, and a wave brought the boy back to consciousness after the old wizard took his seat again.

"Thank you again for this opportunity," Snape said stiffly.

He stood, and Dumbledore smiled tightly as he, too, rose to shake hands.

"Thank you for coming," Albus replied, surveying the boy's face carefully. "I shall inform you of my decision by July first."

The dark haired boy nodded curtly and spun on his heel. The door closed quietly behind his swirling black cloak. Still, Albus continued eyeing the exit until he heard the telltale noise of the gargoyle's grinding gait as it stepped again in front of the entry. He had seen Snape's intention clearly. He would soon inspire a hunt that would, more likely than not, consume his dark master. With any luck, Albus thought, the threat would spur Tom Riddle to the point of distraction.

A gentle wave of his wand extinguished the ever-burning candles floating overhead. Exhausted beyond his considerable years, the old man quit his office for bed, where he would lie, awake and mourning, for the choice he felt duty-bound to make in support of the greater good.

* * *

 **December 1979 - Lily**

"I hate Mondays."

The woman grimaced and grunted, shifting her position draped across the squat floral sofa bisecting the sitting room. She stared at her freckled knees, hooked over the plush mustard-yellow armrest, further mashing the velvet where the ugly sofa's many habitual occupants had worn a faded patch in the upholstery. She heard a slurp, and glanced up to find her bespectacled husband leaning against the dark wood doorjamb across from the sofa. A smile played about his lips. He blew on his steaming mug and took another long sip.

Up. Down.

She tucked her chin and raised her upper body in a twisting movement, switching focus to the old standing lamp across the room while slowly curling right elbow to meet left knee above her flat belly. The exercise continued with the opposite limbs and no less enjoyment.

"You really should do that on the floor, Lils," James observed after taking a long draught.

The slightly sour, bitter smell of his coffee stung her nose, and she fought the urge to gag.

"You'll hurt your back."

His index finger idly traced the lip of his mug, catching on the chip where the smooth glaze gave way to a half-moon of naked, stained earthenware. She followed the motion from the gap between her bicep and lower arm before flicking her eyes up to meet his gaze in mid-crunch.

"Firming charm," she dismissed while completing the last of the set. "And don't you preach to me about my aching back. You're not carrying a banana over your squished organs and sicking up your breakfast every other day."

"No," he smirked. "You're right, of course. I just worry about the state of my hands, you see."

Her left eyebrow rose in question and threat at the nonsensical response.

"I mean, a man can only massage his lovely wife so long before losing all feeling in his hands," he smirked. "And then where would you be?"

She swung her knees down and sat upright to glare at her smugly staring husband, face flushing with rising pique while her eyes narrowed.

"And how, pray tell, would the state of your delicate hands affect me for any longer than it'd take to floo Moony or Pads?" Lily asked icily. "Because the way you're going, I'm thinking about hexing them off."

Despite the aggravation on her freckled face and the shower of sparks shooting from her wand to scorch the maroon shag rug, James showed no sign of repentance. He rest his coffee cup on the low bookcase framing the right side of the doorway and loped forward with a sly smile playing about his constantly laughing mouth.

"Oh, Love," he murmured as he knelt at her feet.

The wand in her hand twitched and spewed a little steam as his hands found her knees and gently inched up, up, over her soft thighs, toward her hips. Her glare intensified, and the heart-shaped freckle over her cupids bow puckered.

"There's so much more to do with these hands than ease your aches and pains," he rumbled with a grin.

He leaned up. His nose brushed against hers, and she felt him smile at the sound of her breath catching.

"But I understand if you've finally succumbed to Padfoot's aristocratic beauty."

Her fingers clenched in his messy hair above the scruff of his neck and tugged him forward. The anger melted from her face, and a different sort of heat played across her cheeks and pulled her mouth into a small smile. She felt the spark of electricity humming against her lips, and though he leaned close, he resisted the inclination to close the gap as her hold tightened. Her fingernails scratched at his scalp.

"You're a ridiculous man," she finally sighed, crushing her lips to his in a demanding kiss.

James made a muffled sort of groan, and his fingers sought the soft skin of her waist hiding beneath the worn Led Zeppelin t-shirt skimming her hips. Her unoccupied hand grasped at the collar of his crisp white shirt, and they vaguely registered the sound of her wand dropping softly to the rug. She pushed him forward, and he gladly pulled his wife by the hips to straddle his lap. They tasted and teased, grappled and gasped, and thoroughly lost themselves to the delight of sensation.

"Prongs!"

Lily groaned, and the man beneath me made a low, grumbling curse as he let his head fall back onto the thick shag rug with a thump. She huffed but remained astride his lap with her arms crossed as Sirius Black rounded the corner.

"Pro-"

He paused in the doorway to process his friends' position on the floor. His arrested greeting disappeared behind a rakish smile until he focused on the woman's mirthless expression.

"This had better be important or I'm going to transfigure you into a fly and stick you in Sir Croak's terrarium," she threatened.

The toad in question, her curiously immortal potions tester and familiar, gave a deep anticipatory _RIBBIT!_ at the mention of his name. The walls of his large, fishbowl-shaped habitat amplified the sound enough that the intruding man flinched against his best efforts. He shot a glare at the quaffle-sized amphibian and hastily nodded his acceptance, to which she reluctantly responded by untangling her limbs from James' and returning to the sofa.

"So?" James prompted only a little tartly.

"Is Lily armed?"

She reflexively reached for her fallen weapon, but James deftly caught her wrists in his gentle grip before she could pluck it from the plush carpet and do harm to his closest friend.

"Pads," he sighed. "I'm in enough trouble as is. If you could-"

"He means, 'out with it,'" she snarled. "I'm pregnant and in a foul mood."

The usually confident wizard shifted his weight nervously and searched his trousers and worn leather jacket for the reason behind his impromptu visit. An impatient flick of the wrist wandlessly summoned a purple envelope from Sirius's breast pocket, and he quickly unglued his lips before the missive could reach Lily's fingertips.

"Dumbledore said you shouldn't go on missions anymore, with us or the Unspeakables," he rushed. "He said everything's explained in the letter, but wanted you to know that it'll activate the obedience clauses of our fealty oaths to the Order if you open it."

She paused with her thumb brushing the phoenix-emblazoned seal, and the feelings painted across her freckled features cooled from indignation to thoughtful apprehension. Sirius fidgeted anxiously in the doorway, while James looked on with mild curiosity.

"He said he wanted to give you the option," Sirius elaborated. "Seems to think it's a life or death kind of thing."

Lily's lips thinned to a grim line the men had long ago learned to associate with impending pain on someone's part (usually theirs), and they seemed to hold their breath as she broke the dried circle of red wax. A trailing swirl of smoke rose from the parchment and momentarily shrouded the letter as she withdrew it from the stiff envelope. She coughed, eyes flitting rapidly across the page once, twice and a third repetition. All she accomplished faster than either wizard could have done for a single study with her brows scrunched together.

James brushed his knuckles across her cheek, where her usually golden freckles appeared progressively darker over her rapidly paling skin.

"Thanks for bringing this to me," she finally managed over a catch in her throat. "But James and I need to discuss this in private."

The leather-clad man opened his mouth as if to protest, but a glance at his brother-in-arms stalled his tongue.

"All right," he mumbled, absently tucking his hands into his pockets. "Floo me later so I know you three are O.K. will you?"

"Of course, Padfoot," James easily agreed.

The witch continued to stare at the headmaster's message until the garden door closed with a clatter. James flinched.

"We ought to fix the framing before the glass panes shake loose," Lily idly mused.

"Love?"

She took a long exhale and a calming breath in before starting again.

"My mum and dad are dead," she murmured. "The dark bastard is coming after us in force. He's issued an ultimatum apparently. Dumbledore says he'll try to contact us soon to recruit us, and if we don't accept, he'll send his hunting squad after us so the Malfoys can inherit your gold. He also says we've got a traitor among the Unspeakables and another among us, and I'm to withdraw from the field to avoid capture and to continue my work, either way."

James gently prised the litter from her white-knuckled grip and smoothed out the wrinkles creasing the heavy vellum. He frowned at the text and tapped it with his wand several times.

"I can't read this," he softly said. "What aren't you telling me, love?"

She sighed as he pulled her into his lap and wrapped her in his warm, wiry arms. Her chest tightened painfully, and she swallowed back a sob.

"Lily…"

Uncaring of the scratch of his stubble against her temple and cheek, the young witch buried her face against his neck, and a moment later, succumbed to gasping, bitter tears. James immediately responded by clutching tighter and stroking her long hair. He whispered soothing nonsense into her ear, but as much as she wanted to, Lily could not focus on the words well enough to understand them. The enchanted missive seemed burned across the back of her eyelids:

 _Lily,_

 _My dear, dear girl, it is my great regret to inform you of your mother and father's passing very early this morning. Tom Riddle, along with several of his Death Eaters, ambushed Mr and Mrs Evans as they returned from the cinema yesterday evening. They were questioned using the_ Imperius Curse _, then executed by Riddle's own hand. It is my understanding they suffered no pain._

 _You have my sincere condolences and deepest sympathies. Love is never easy, and grieving, never gentle._

 _It is for this reason I invoke the magic of your vows. By the oaths you have sworn, I bind you to secrecy and command your service._

 _If I understand your latest reports correctly, you have come to the same disturbing conclusion as I have concerning Riddle's unnatural invulnerability, which you well demonstrated during your last confrontation. There is no one, I believe, who could have survived such staggering and impressive examples of mayhem, destruction, and bodily harm. He has done something against nature itself to accelerate his healing and to resist damage. It is my sincerest belief even the combined power of every magic you have studied would not be enough to end him, and my attempts to draw him into an open duel have been met with avoidance. In addition, I believe you are cognizant of Her Majesty's decree, which our Minister Bagnold so foolishly dismisses._

 _To complicate matters, there has also been a prophecy that may deliver us the means for Riddle's defeat witnessed by wizards and recorded by magic in the halls of your esteemed department. My sources say it reveals a child shall be born by the end of July to parents who have thrice defied him, whose power will equal the Dark Lord's, and whose destiny lies in Riddle's ultimate vanquishment; however, we both know the nature of such prophecies. They hold power over those who believe in their validity. Unfortunately, our opponent places great import on the power of symbols and ancient magicks, and it is extremely likely he has already learned of the prophecy's existence. Soon, he will seek either you or Alice, with whom I'm sure you've confided in light of your impending parenthoods._

 _We need time, my dear, for your respective children to grow (should Riddle's belief hold truer than ours) and for the Order to scourge his hatred from our society, and we have none left to us. Therefore, I must present you with a terrible choice._

 _I know the work you have done in your pursuit of an answer to Riddle, thus far, and I know how closely you have studied the realms of magic too dangerous for most. There are ways to preserve both your children's lives if the worst should come to pass that would also foil our enemy. These methods always come at an impossible price; however, I offer you the choice. As dearly as I hold you, James, Alice and Frank, I cannot make the decision on my own._

 _We must find a way to end the beast's reign by the year's end, one way or another, or all is lost. You cannot share with James the truth of your mission if you are to escape further scrutiny. He would not leave your side, and our enemy would quickly ascertain your part in Mr Potter's motivations. Similarly, I have instructed Alice to keep Frank and Augusta in the dark, for now._

 _I am sorry, Lily. Truly, we will never repay the debt owed to you or Alice, whether the worst should come, or not._

 _Good Luck and Godspeed,_

 _A. P. W. B. Dumbledore_

…

Lily could not remember when she fell asleep, but she woke up in her bed with James curled around body. Her face and chest ached. Her head spun as she extricated herself from his hold, but thankfully the nausea that had once been a daily occurrence did not follow the vertigo. The hardwood felt cold underfoot on her way to the closet, where she found one of the many long, floral dresses her mother had bought for her just a couple of weeks ago. She briefly ached for the excitement she had shared with a woman she would never see again, making a mental note to inquire after her parents' estate and to call her sister before donning a voluminous grey robe. Its long sleeves hid the velvet underneath, and its loosely tailored cut immediately obscured any hint at her swollen belly. A glance at her wristwatch sent her quickly down the stairs, through the mudroom, and into the dewy garden, where her pumpkin vines lay tangles amidst sprouting lettuce, herbs and potions ingredients. She felt the zing of the cottage's anti-apparition wards release her at an invisible boundary, and a moment later, she stood in the bustling atrium of the Ministry of Magic.

She promptly dashed to the nearest rubbish bin to sick up part of her supper, which she did not remember eating. A few witches and wizards sent disgusted or concerned glances at her, but she ignored them in favour of vanishing the bile and casting a dental cleaning charm at her mouth. The sour taste immediately disappeared as she vanished the bacteria and acid clinging to her tongue and teeth.

Glancing around from beneath her shadowed hood at all the official looking witches and wizards with greying or salt-and-pepper hair, Lily suddenly felt impossibly young. Most looked around the same age of her own parents, and many looked older, amidst only a few new hires in their late teens and early twenties, recent graduates of Hogwarts or elsewhere, milled about on their way to the office. Lily was nineteen, pregnant, fighting a war, and she desperately wanted to curl up against her dad's shoulder and forget all of it. Her stomach churned again, and she rapidly stopped that train of thought and joined a queue headed toward the lifts. She kept her hood up, glad of the thick layer of charms designed to hide her identifying features. Workers got on. Others got off. Finally the pleasant disembodied voice announced her arrival, and she continued down the corridor to the black door. The circular antechamber spun very slowly until the portal she needed faced her and opened in recognition of her magic. Beyond, a figure cloaked in a grey robe identical to hers hunched over a desk, surrounded by sparkling gold and glass. Clocks tick-tocked in unison on every inch of wall and ceiling inside. Pendulums of every size, shape and colour swung back and forth. The soft hiss of sand sung in the background.

"Hello, Doe," the figure grunted, confirming his identity in her mind by his gravelly rumble. "How's Fonzie?"

Even with the storm raging through her head, she cracked a smile at his subtle security check. Her cat was so skittish, only a few people had met him.

"As cool as he can be, considering he has to deal with Prongs and Padfoot," Lily hummed tiredly. "What about Algie?

"The old bastard's still up to the same old mess," he sighed. "He's trying to convince me to go to Syria on a rare herb hunt for our vacation. Eighty-six years of marriage and the arsehole still hasn't taken me on a bloody cruise… But never mind that. What are you doing here so early?"

She raised a finger to her lips and cast a series of privacy wards around them. Croaker dropped his hood when she finished, but she kept hers raised.

"We've a spy among the ranks, and I've been compromised," she said in a grave whisper. "My parents are dead. I'm taking a leave of absence to take care of their affairs, and then I'm going to continue my work from home."

He blinked and frowned, his grizzled old face contorting in deep furrows.

"I see," he sighed. "Very well. I think I understand you, Lass."

The grizzled old man scratched his wispy hair and shook his head sadly.

"This war's cost too much."

"It isn't over yet," Lily replied bitterly.

Her de-facto boss stared at her with milky gray eyes, and despite his cataracts, she felt as though he had met her gaze and held it for a long while.

"No… No. It isn't. Goodbye, my dear Doe."

…

Lily took no time to cry after her tears ran dry that first night. James worried she was bottling up her volatile temper and grief to her detriment. She, however, hoped the veneer of mourning – real, but insignificant in light of what was to come – held firm enough that the clever marauder would not perceive anything else afoot. Though she missed her parents dearly, she had been prepared for their eventual deaths. Nothing could calm her now she knew the true stakes.

She had only recently married last year, and they had not planned on her becoming pregnant so soon. Their lives had long been forged in the heat of civil war, and they had never thought to bring a new life into that horrible reality. Children were liabilities: a weak point for the enemy to exploit. They were vulnerable, and detracted from the numbers available to fight. Worse, there was no guarantee they could protect so precious an existence. Still, she had begun to feel joy. She had begun to hope that the many-layered spells hiding their home would be enough to protect their child and whoever took over his or her care if they didn't make it themselves. She had believed they had time to find a way forward.

With her chief's blessing, Lily moved the entirety of her laboratory to the cottage in Godric's Hollow and rapidly became a woman obsessed.

While her husband watched in combined amusement and concern, she reworked everything. She dug up the ward stones and re-carved the runes to erect the strongest anti-detection, anti-owl, anti-floo, anti-apparition, anti-portkey, obscuring, anti-plotting and identifying protections she could design on top of their signature-keyed access wards, which prevented any save those they allowed from entering their property. To anyone not on the very short list, the house looked very much like a tiny two-room cottage whose sole occupant – a very old man with an exceedingly mean face – could be witnessed digging in the garden for an hour or so every other day. The other occupants of the village (both magical and mundane) quickly came to the conclusion that the old hermit was not to be disturbed, for anyone who managed to approach the ward boundary found themselves chased away by the old man's black wolfhound, the hoe-wielding old codger himself, or otherwise distracted by urgent business they had forgotten to attend to. The uninvited individual's experience depended entirely upon chance.

She followed these measures as quickly as possible with the Fidelius charm, which she laid not on the building or property, but on herself, her husband, and her unborn child. The reconstruction of the spell took nearly a month to accomplish between testing on Sir Ribbit and reworking the arithmantic formulae associated with the complex magic, but finally the day came to choose a secret keeper.

The headmaster called a select number of the Order together, and as all those esteemed folk had earned the Potters' trust enough to have access to their property, they gathered in their small sitting room. McGonagall smiled wanly beside Lily and James, while the former discussed the impending arrival of her child and the latter interjected witty flirtations for the aged transfigurations mistress. Moody talked in low tones with Edgar Bones while Alice and Frank Longbottom chatted amiably from the loveseat by the fire. Remus Lupin and Sirius Black played Exploding Snap with Peter Pettigrew on the carpet, just like they had in the Gryffindor common room. It was a subdued gathering filled with the quiet laughter and small smiles of those under extreme stress. A few months ago, there would have been three others among them. Albus arrived last in a swirl of sherbet orange robes and with a whiff of lemons about him.

"Oh, hello-"

The corners of his eyes crinkled merrily, and his silvery moustache twitched as he entered the parlour.

"I see everyone's arrived ahead of me, as usual. Do forgive my lateness," he said with an apologetic bow.

The men and women in the room, all former students or colleagues of the headmaster, quickly waved away his concerns with grins and greetings of their own.

"Well, then. Lily, if you would start of our business?"

Nine sets of eyes swivelled to her, and the redhead took a deep breath to slow her slightly irregular heartbeat.

"You all will have noticed by now that James and I haven't been out and about together, lately, and it's because I've been working very hard on a way to end You-Know-Who," she began, her mouth twisting in annoyance around the moniker.

Pesky Taboos.

"You may have guessed that already, considering the recent Death Eater activity, but anyway-"

She flicked her wand and a dry-erase board shot over everyone's heads to hover above the fireplace. Multicoloured ink obscured the majority of the board in complex diagrams and designs, and Edgar and Dumbledore leaned forward with interest.

"I've developed a variation of the fidelius that should allow James to continue missions when you need the extra firepower, and allow me to leave the house if I need to retrieve a resource from elsewhere without taking one of you with me," she explained, tapping certain portions of her tidy script. "Rather than hiding the cottage's location, I've made it possible to hide a _person_ from all knowledge save for those told by the keeper."

Impressed sounds swept her sitting room, and Dumbledore's bright blue eyes twinkled merrily at the revelation.

"In essence, once I've cast it, James, myself and this one," she gestured to the curve of her abdomen. "We'll basically cease to exist as far as anyone else knows. The secret keeper will be able to let people in on the secret by informing them of our full names combined with a passphrase. Those who knew us will still remember things we've done together, but they won't be able to recall any identifying features, our names, or even if we live in the country. Anyone reading our names won't be able to comprehend them."

"Marvellous," the headmaster praised. "Which brings us to the next order of business, and the reason why Remus and Peter have joined us despite remaining outside our main operations. Lily has intimated she would like one of her blood brothers to take up the mantle of Secret Keeper. She requires assistance in powering the spell – more than shielding the home would require – and of course, you all would probably enjoy continued recognition of our most esteemed mistress of the arcane, so the Keeper will be sharing the Secret with you immediately after the spell is cast."

Edgar Bones adjusted his wire-rimmed, square glasses and raised a hand to silence the sudden murmurs of excitement and curiosity uttered by everyone who had not known the extent of Lily's work, which included all but Dumbledore and herself. The woman uncrossed her legs and stretched against the ache in her back after nodding to the formidable hitwizard.

"Have you tested this, little Doe?" he asked softly. "Soul magicks are dangerous at the best of times."

"Yes, I did," she agreed amiably. "Mice and grasshoppers, first, and then Sir Ribbit."

James huffed loudly.

"She still hasn't told me that last one," the dark-haired auror complained, glaring at his wife. "I keep running into something wet and squishy. It better not be one of those slime monsters you made for Hallowe'en seventh year."

Lily laughed, and the rich, husky sound further relaxed her anxious friends and comrades, who joined in her mirth. She pointed a wand at the apparently empty terrarium perched on a table in a shadowed corner.

"Me gat'avisup'lebis saidumlo ch'emi suli ise, rom ch'emi gombesho ser Ribbit sheidzleba ts'nobilia, rom t'k'ven," she pronounced carefully.

With a soft sucking sound, the terrarium-bound potions toad appeared amidst its loamy bedding, half in and half out of its murky little pond.

"Groovy," Alice complimented. "I hadn't even noticed he was missing."

"Exactly," Lily said smugly. "It's perfectly safe. Just follow my instructions."

With that, the headmaster clapped his hands together, and everyone quickly followed their hosts and leader from the sitting room to the back garden. The glass panes rattled in their framing while the door swung between exiting witches and wizards, who gathered at Lily's direction around a patio constructed from smooth, round river stones arranged in a circular mosaic. The bistro table and chairs that usually occupied the area rest outside the paving stones' borders along with a wide, squat cauldron whose insides indicated it doubled as a potions vessel and fire pit, depending on its user's whims. The redheaded witch carefully arranged her friends around the circle, often consulting the starry sky to more accurately place the witches and wizards according to cardinal direction. The most powerful of their number took these points: Dumbledore to the north, Edgar to the south, McGonagall to the west and Alice to the east. She led Frank to the place opposite his wife and Moody across from the headmaster, leaving their family friends around her.

"Right," she hummed. "Your arrangement will balance the power around the ring's edge. All that's left is-"

"Our decision for the Secret Keeper," James finished with uncharacteristic seriousness on his face. "So?"

"It should be Padfoot," Remus said immediately. "He's the best duellist here behind Edgar and Moody, plus he's a stubborn bastard."

The fine-featured, leather-clad wizard punched his sandy-haired friend in the shoulder.

"Yeah, but everyone knows we're like brothers," he argued. "It'd make more sense to choose someone they'd be unlikely to ever consider."

Lily kept her thoughts to herself on that line of logic, and any other time, she would have argued vehemently against such a hare-brained idea. Subtlety was well and good, but those who had yet to catch the Death Eaters' attention were generally sub-par fighters or disinterested in the conflict, and so inappropriate for such a dangerous role. Her wards, however, had already made the choice for her. Over the past several weeks, her will had crystallised with each arithmantic and statistical analysis of the situation. The best chances for waylaying the Dark Lord indefinitely lay in a very costly sacrifice. She had resolved to pay it for her child's survival, for the sake of his or her future, and to spare Alice Longbottom the decision, herself. She could not ask it of her.

The moment their guests arrived, her clever identification ward had done its work. It would have removed disguises, if someone were wearing one, including transfigurations, cantrips and potions-induced alterations, but it also alerted her to the presence of a very specific calling card. While her husband and his cousin debated the merits of appointing Remus, Alice, or even Dumbledore himself (because no one would ever get the secret from him, they were sure) Lily turned her gaze on the person no one considered.

Peter watched the verbal volley with darting, watery blue eyes. At twenty-two, he had yet to grow out of his boyish pudginess, but had the unfortunate luck of premature balding. He twitched at every sound, not unlike his alter ego's namesake, and he offered neither opinions nor neutral commentary to the others.

"It should be Wormtail," Lily said with a small smile.

The others stared at her in disbelief.

"Well, you lot didn't think of him. He's the last anyone would expect, and he can go into hiding, too. We can make his place unplottable and raise siege wards around it," she explained sensibly, though her heart felt heavy and her belly churned.

She felt her baby flutter inside her abdomen, and gave a silent prayer she had made the correct choice. It would not do to falter.

"That's brilliant!" James crowed after a long beat of silence.

He swept her into his arms and kissed her soundly for her ingenuity, and she felt the urge to cry. Sirius joined in his celebration, and soon, he occupied the space between Alice and Dumbledore, while Sirius took the opposite edge.

"Join hands, everyone," she instructed. "Peter, stand in the centre and grasp James' right hand. It's important you all focus on breathing deeply and evenly. This is going to draw on a lot of power and it won't do if any of you faints on us."

When she had met the gazes of every person surrounding her small family, Lily pulled up her jumper a little to place Peter's clammy palm over her stomach with her hand on his. She took a deep breath and murmured a short spell, flicking her wand. James and Wormtail made small sounds of surprise as a rune carved itself into their joined hands and Lily's belly.

"From now on, no one speaks save myself and Peter. Peter, you will have to answer me, and when the incantation is finished, you'll swear on your life and magic."

She felt the man stiffen, and the twitch of his fingers over her navel made her stomach clench again. They were out of time, however, and she would do everything in her power to ensure her child's survival. She drew a deep breath, waved her wand, and began the long incantation.

"Miighos ut'khra t'k'veni suli tvirt'i ts'odna, romlis gagebis mart'avs barieri sits'ots'khlesa da sikvdils shoris," she intoned.

The Georgian words, the most ancient ones she could find to correspond with the runes carved into their skin, twisted over her tongue in a foreign cadence. They left her lips as smoothly as if she'd always known them, and she felt glad she rehearsed the ritual so many times.

 _Take unto your soul the burden of knowledge whose comprehension straddles the barrier between life and death._

"Dumili ena qvelas, vints' daazaralebs, romelits' t'k'ven dasats'avad. Khels utsqobs t'k'vens arsi saidumlo arseboba," she continued as wind swept the garden, making her skirt ripple around her calves and ankles.

 _Silence your tongue to all who would harm that which you would protect._

Warmth spread across her palms and chest.

"Amieridan aravin ar its'is, lili Elizabeth Evans Potter, James Charlus Potter, arts' mat'i modgma nebismieri sakheli, sakhe, an tsarmomadgenloba."

 _Weave into your essence the threads of our existence, so none shall know Lily Elizabeth Evans Potter, James Charlus Potter, or their progeny by any name or representation._

She turned her gaze on Peter, who stared at her in wide-eyed fear. She knew what he was experiencing. It was not a gentle thing, the magic binding him to them. It zinged across his skin like electricity, burning rapidly, only to leave him feeling cold with each pulse. His heart thudded heavily against his ribcage, as if it had grown twice its size and had been put in a vice.

"Do you take unto yourself the secret of life and the weight of these three souls, whose magic you tie to yours and whose existence you shall shroud?"

He stuttered his answer.

"I- I do."

"Will you give only unto the trusted, good, and sworn your knowledge?"

"I will," he replied quickly.

She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed around his nervousness.

"Do you swear to tie these three souls to your own, never to part from yours until you are relieved?"

He nodded frantically.

"I so swear on my life and magic."

A bright glow surrounded them, and a blinding flash momentarily washed away the darkness. The hum of magic filled the air, which smelled of ozone and copper. Lily opened her eyes to the sound of confusion. The gathered witches and wizards in their circle stared around in bewilderment.

"What are we doing out here? Weren't we going to meet in…" Alice trailed off, staring at the house. "Who's hosting, again? Did Siri spike the punch again?"

Wormtail listened to their commentary slack-jawed.

"Just tell them all individually, 'I release the secret of my soul so Lily Elizabeth Evans Potter, James Charlus Potter and their progeny shall be known to you' and they'll be able to see us," Lily said wearily. "Since I was so heavily involved in this process, they're not likely to remember what just happened."

After a nudge from James, Peter went around whispering in ears until none remained incognizant of their presence. Laughing and chatting excitedly about the spell's effects, the Order filed back into the house for warm butterbeer and cider. The conversation quickly turned to recent intelligence and discussion on the latest arrests. Lily curled against her husband's side, her arms wrapped tightly about his waist, while their voices faded in her perception to a mild drone. Only Alice Longbottom seemed to notice her inattention, but she understood enough to merely give her small smiles of encouragement and understanding whenever Lily managed to lift her eyes.

* * *

 **February 1980**

Squashy reclining armchairs, Lily mused, felt much, much better than the crinkly paper and barely-padded table typical to a hospital. She breathed deeply, focusing on the scent of Madam Pomfrey's citrusy soap as she forced her muscles to relax against the velvety upholstery. Her baby moved, and she made a soft sound of appreciation for the sensation while the healer ran her wand over her swollen midsection.

She still could not quite wrap her head around the magic inherent in the feeling of life growing inside her. James caught her eye from the doorway, where he watched with a wide smile stretching his cheeks and a familiar glint in her eye. The baby performed another feat of acrobatics in response to her involuntary reaction to unspoken suggestion.

"Your temperature's rising," the healer commented. "Is something the matter, dear?"

Lily's freckled face flushed scarlet, and James coughed to cover his laugh. The attempt at discretion still drew a glare from his wife, but the healer chose not to follow that line of inquiry, instead switching to questions on other symptoms. The mother-to-be gave detailed answers until, finally, the time had come to check on the baby. Pomfrey lightly skimmed the tip of her wand across Lily's naked belly, and a quick charm amplified the usually indiscernible sounds.

A gentle, rhythmic whooshing filled the air, and the young woman couldn't help smiling despite the stress weighing down on her and the anxiety-inducing circumstances in whish she planned to deliver her child. The healer moved the wand in a careful pattern over her patient's skin, and when she dismissed the _sonorous_ spell, cast another at a nearby self-inking quill. The feather began making a detailed visual translation of the ultrasonic readings. It danced across the parchment while James helpfully shot gentle drying charms at it.

"Well, Lily, everything looks well enough," Promfrey sighed. "Do try to eat more, though. You're a little underweight, and as this is your first pregnancy and you're quite small to start with, we want as much on our side as possible so as to avoid complications."

"Yes ma'am," the redhead grinned cheekily. "James will go buy me ice cream post-haste, won't you dear?"

The auror straightened in surprise at the sound of his name, his focus broken from the image forming on the page.

"What?"

His wife's eyes narrowed.

"Ice cream. Now. Tesco."

"Right! Yeah, got it. I'll be back in a moment! Just wait there," he called, promptly throwing on a jacket and leaving via the front door.

The front door closed a little loudly, and a moment later, the women heard a faint crack of apparition.

"How does he buy anything when no one can perceive him?" Pomfrey murmured confusedly. "Did you have Peter tell a store keeper?"

Lily tugged her jumper back over her midsection and groaned a little when the wooden lever controlling the recliner released a little too quickly, springing her upright with a jolt.

"No," she laughed. "Sirius and Remus are both on call in their London flats. They go with him, and James buys them rude magazines. But now that he's gone-"

Madam Pomfrey made an exasperated sound of understanding and began bustling around, making herbal tea and a snack for the younger woman in an effort to take advantage of the extra time afforded her.

"What would happen if I took some of the baby's blood?"

A mug crashed to the floor.

"Why ever for?" the healer said in a strained voice from the small kitchen.

"I'm creating something to protect it from… From You-Know-Who if something happens to us," Lily admitted softly, unable to meet her eyes.

For a few minutes, all she could hear were the sounds of cooking. The china clinked as Promfrey laid out a saucer, cup and plate. A metallic clang denoted her wand against the kettle, and in moments she heard the roiling bubble of boiling water. Another clatter evidenced the introduction of a pan to the cooker, and the smell and sound of sizzling butter drifted out of the echo-y tile room to make Lily's stomach grumble.

"As your healer, I strongly advise against taking any blood, even a few drops," Pomfrey grumbled when she emerged with a tray in hand.

She made it hover at a comfortable height over her patient's lap, and Lily obliged her by tucking in without argument. The grey-haired woman's brows crinkled over her sharp eyes as if in consideration. Unwilling to disrupt her thought process or earn her ire, the redhead continued her meal of toasted beef and cheese sandwich until only a few crusts and her tea dregs remained.

"If you must have something of your child's essence, we can extract a small amount of amniotic fluid, which you can replicate for your purposes," the healer finally offered after banishing the tray to the kitchen counter. "But be careful. I can tell the child's magical, already, and drawing on his or her magic before it's left the womb would have severe effects if things go wrong. Miscarriage, for one, would be a concern. Or physical defects."

Lily rubbed her belly and nodded.

"Help me?" she asked after a moment, to which the healer nodded in a resigned sort of way.

The grey-haired matron left the cottage half an hour later, leaving her charge with a teaspoon of amniotic fluid in a phial. Once the door closed, Lily cast a refilling charm on the glass followed by a stasis spell, and the pale, transparent yellow liquid multiplied until it filled the phial to just below the stopper. She tucked it into the pocket of her long skirt and glanced over her shoulder to the clock over the fireplace. Its gleaming, black enamel numbers and filigreed hands gleamed under the low dome of glass protecting them. The arch of bronze cast in the shape of two months in profile with lacy wings framed it, and underneath the 6 o'clock position, a smaller moth swung back and forth on a short pendulum.

 _Tic-toc. Tic-toc. Tic-toc._

The minute arm swung forward with a muted click. Lily's stomach flipped, her heart sped a little. She forced her gaze away from the vile instrument of infinite countdowns and flicked her wand at. The noise ceased, leaving only the faint, high-pitched hum of magic in her ears. A snap of her fingers commanded the top of her record player cabinet to swing quietly open. Its turntable and speakers turned on with a low buzz, and the kissing doors on its front opened to allow her favourite record's escape. It floated to its place. The arm swung smoothly into place and the needle found the groove.

The sound of machinery, tearing paper, muted conversation, laughter, the bells of a till, an airplane – The unrelated and seemingly random sounds built in a steady rhythm, coming to a crescendo and easing away in a flow of dreamy guitar, slow percussion, and gentle bass.

" _Breathe! Breathe in the air-"_

She hummed along, and the anxiety in her chest soothed a little under the influence of the melody. It wasn't a happy song, but it gave her enough distance from the roiling emotions on the edge of her consciousness to focus on more important pursuits. She didn't have time to panic, and she couldn't afford to break down when so much relied on her success. With the comforting strains of Pink Floyd filling her ears, Lily turned to her project of the day. She left the cosy confines of her sitting room, rounded the base of the stairs, and continued down the short hallway to the study. Cardboard boxes lay stacked in the arched entrance, overflowing with parchment, office supplies, odd instruments, and books whose threadbare, cracked spines had seen better days. The office itself, a large rectangular space featuring a dusty wooden floor, burgundy-draped windows, and dirty bell-shaped gas lamps, lay empty of other furnishing despite having quit her job ages ago. She had been putting it off its furnishing and organisation in favour of preparing her child's nursery and conducting research in a London library with an undetectably expanded bag full of books charmed to look like physics text to anyone save herself.

A sweep of her left hand banished the layer of fine grey blanketing the floor, and a jab of her wand in her right cast a scouring charm at the dark-stained wood. A somewhat squeaky sound followed, leaving the floorboards gleaming in the dim light. She continued the cleaning with the lamps and curtains, until the room again looked as it had when they moved into the homey little cottage. Lily padded into the room and turned, casting a critical eye over its architecture. She worried her lower lip between her teeth while considering her options.

The space needed to remain relatively open for experimentation purposes, but the books and things in the hall needed to go somewhere. She also needed a place to write.

Her mum would have known what to do with the place. She always had excellent taste in furnishings and an eye for efficient design.

Lily pushed the errant thought aside. A flick and swirl of her wand made the wall groan. Its surface warped and creaked, the molecules making up the wood panelling flying apart and reassembling behind the dark green wallpaper, until wall-to-wall shelves burst through to stretch from ceiling to the floor, leaving wide spaces in between. The wallpaper's ragged edge healed wherever it touched the newly formed risers.

In the background, the music morphed to something funkier, full of _wah-wahs,_ overlaid by screaming guitar, and underwritten by a faster, jazzy beat.

"I hope you get my LPs," she said suddenly, directing the commentary at her baby. "If you don't, I'm sure you'll get to appreciate Floyd, anyhow. Oh-"

She smiled, stepping aside to allow her books to float from their storage boxes to arrange themselves on the new shelving.

"You'll love Led Zeppelin, too. Your dad took me to see them for a date one year, when we were still in school," she reminisced. "I still can't believe I let him sneak me out like that. I would have hexed him for suggesting such a thing just a couple years before that."

The redhead snorted and shook her head as she turned her attention to the wall facing the study's entrance. She began transfiguring a long Murphy desk behind witch she created a recessed glass cabinet for potions ingredients and other small storage.

"Imagine, your mum, Head Girl and everything, wandering around after hours to go to London in the middle of the afternoon."

A high-pitched ringing sort of screech accompanied the formation of glass-fronted drawers with little round pull handles. She again stepped out of the way for the boxes sliding into the room, from which phials, jars, and beakers danced to find spots in their new home.

"He got me high, too, the arsehole," she laughed. "I couldn't stop laughing, I was so loopy, and I was still gone when he apparated us back to Hogsmeade. We ended up sleeping in one of Rosmerta's rooms."

"Bless her-"

Lily jumped and spun, her wand pointed at the source of the voice only to find her husband leaning casually against the wall, grinning at her as mischievously as always.

"It's good she was always the discreet sort," he continued, holding up a plastic sack through which the tempting label of her favourite creamery teased her. "Otherwise we would have been in loads of trouble later that morning."

"Lucky she's a shameless romantic, you mean," Lily huffed.

Her heartbeat slowed again, but the weight in her belly cartwheeled.

"Did you get me a spoon, already?" she asked a little testily.

James pushed away from the wall to lope toward her. The cold bag swung and bumped against the back of her thigh as he wrapped his arms around her waist, and she flinched away from the sensation with a glare for her husband. He continued grinning unapologetically. His hands slid from her lower back and waist up her sides, skimming the sides of her heavy breasts, over her collarbone and throat until they cupped her face between his broom-calloused palms.

She felt her cheeks heat, and her eyes closed as his lips found hers.

He pulled away only when both were breathless and gasping. The glint in his eyes made her abdomen clench and a shiver shoot down her spine. She took a deep, steadying breath. His eyes flicked to her chest. His grip tightened on her hips. Without another word, he bent, swung an arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, shot a cooling and stasis spell at the ice cream, and a moment later bounded up the stairs.

The rest of the study went unfinished for the evening. James held her captive in their bedroom, and she had no desire to escape from the all-consuming heat of his worshipful adoration, nor from the brief reprieve his love afforded her.


	2. The Boy Who Wasn't

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to the author and his/her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Two - The Boy Who Wasn't

* * *

 **31 October 1981**

Nestled in the countryside, against a backdrop of old woods, beneath a brilliant sky strewn with stars, lay an idyllic little village rich with high-gabled houses, sweetly old-fashioned shops, and lovely inhabitants perfectly incognizant of the visitor who had just arrived with a soft _pop!_ He stood at the top of the hill leading down into the village, observing the happy traffic of children in fancy dress. Their parents and siblings herded them from house-to-house and shop-to-shop, where the proprietors generously awarded the little ones with sweeties and treats. They masqueraded as witches and warlocks, as beasts and faerie-kind, and as superheroes and characters from books.

The interloper went among those innocents, drinking in the sound of their hearts fluttering beneath the influence of chocolate, sugar, and the small thrill of fear maintained by the darkness of the night and the occasional frightening costume. They regarded him much as they would one of those mummers. They unconsciously stepped aside at the hiss of his cloak upon the leaf-littered ground. They averted their eyes from his cold face and scarlet eyes. They silently admired the strength of his stride and the forbidding shadow his cloak created against the pavements. He followed the skitter of tiny paws, while their owner scuttled between shadows and shrubs until both paused upon the street leading from the town square. A the end of the lane, a handsome Tudor cottage of stone, brick and slate overlooked the rest of the village, guarded by a white birch fence. A cobbled garden path led up to the scarlet door, lined with tiny jack o' lanterns carved with bats and faces.

The white gate squeaked softly as the tall figure stepped onto the path. The skittering sound ran ahead of him, punctuated by the click of his boots, until a rat stood on the front step. A moment later, its body squirmed and morphed to yield a pudgy young man with watery blue eyes, a pointed nose, and an anxious, yellowed smile. He shook as he pressed his finger to the bell. Something like electricity shot across their skin, and footfalls sounded from within, followed by the low _click_ of the deadbolt in its housing. The rat man stepped quickly out of view to leave his master famed in the pool of light streaming from the gas lantern overhead. A shimmer interrupted and warped the surface of the door, and a whisper of air sounded as it opened.

"Peter-"

" _Crucio,_ " the rat squeaked.

The slim fingers holding the knob released, revealing a handsome young man writhing on the floor. His eyes stared accusingly at the intruder despite the pain showcased in the tautness of his jaw, the burble of blood around the previously smiling lips, and the horrendous shriek echoing through the air.

"Hello, James," the cloaked man said blandly.

The rat's master stepped across the threshold with no further greeting while the man's scream continued on. His limbs contorted unnaturally. A vein stood out on his reddened throat. Peter, who had not yet released the spell, breathed a high, nervous laugh.

"This your fault, Prongs," he shouted. "You should have joined Him when you had the chance, before you married that mudblood whore! The none of this would have happened."

The cloaked figure raised a pale, slender hand, and the rat man dipped the tip of his wand. James ceased his dance of pain, leaving him gasping for breath.

"Fuck you," he finally managed between wheezing, halting gasps. "Fucking traitor-"

"Language, dear James," the cultured voice intoned as he lowered his hood. "Your lady mother would be most appalled at such rudeness."

The dark haired young man hauled himself up against the arch to the right of the entryway, wheezing a laugh.

"My mother was a Black witch," he spat bitterly. "I bet she cursed you and your lackeys plenty before you managed to take her down. How many did you lose to her wand: ten, fifteen?"

His naked feet found purchase under him, and he raised his gaze to behold the trespasser, who idly twisted and flipped a dark, polished stick between long, graceful fingers. James followed the movement of his wand for a while before taking in the taller man's equally pallid, gaunt, but still handsome features beneath his carefully styled black coif. A gleam of hatred and resolve seeped into his hazel eyes.

"Very good," the intruder complimented, shutting the door behind him as his subordinate obligingly guided James into the cosy sitting room at wand-point. "Still brave in spite of losing your weapon. I still hold it would be an abhorrent waste of talent and power to kill you. Won't you reconsider?"

He tilted his head as an eagle might while assessing its prey.

"Sorry, Voldy, but I still don't roll that way," James grunted, the tremor in his limbs ceasing. "Not much a masochist, either, so yeah. Not a chance."

"As foolishly rebellious as ever, it seems," Voldemort sighed, glancing at his subordinate.

Peter's wand twitched.

"We don't want to hurt you, or Lil-"

"DON'T!" James snarled. "Don't you dare speak her name, you double-crossing son-of a snake. You've lost that privilege."

Voldemort laughed. The sound balanced on the edge between mirth and maliciousness in its tone, and the other men winced at its intensity. He passed James' wand to peter, and his handsome face relaxed into a cold, beatific smile. His long fingers caught James' jaw. The man struggled uselessly against his attacker's stronger hold, while Voldemort pressed a bone-white wand against his cheek. A thick strip of skin pulled slowly away from his face beneath the dark wizard's influence, much like a plaster might. Blood immediately poured from the wound, and Voldemort let the bit of flesh to follow to the floor with a wet, sickening noise.

"I think I shall make you both into a lesson in obedience to your dear fellows," Voldemort whispered as if to a lover, his fingers bruising against the man's jaw. "I take it your lovely young wife's upstairs, of course?"

James could not stop his cry as his tormentor flayed another strip from his cheek.

"I won't let you touch her," he gasped.

Voldemort rolled his eyes, twitched his wand, and sent James flying through the archway into the sitting room. He slammed against the wall beside the fireplace, causing several photos to fall to the floor. Glass shattered on the slate flagstones below to crunch underfoot as James picked himself up again.

"I won't let you," he wheezed. "Her or our baby, you sick son of a bitch."

"Well," Voldemort remarked, stepping around furniture casually to close the distance between them. "If you're so opposed to the idea, I'm sure Peter will be glad to do it."

James smirked, cupping his bloody cheek. Peter's waxy face crumpled slightly, and Voldemort raised a neatly groomed eyebrow.

"You both can go to hell."

James slammed his scarlet-smeared hand onto the mantle, and the house shuddered violently. Pettigrew shrieked as the air whipped furiously around him and his master. An explosion tore through the sitting room, tearing furniture apart and blowing chunks of wood, brick, and green paisley wallpaper into the vortex. Peter Pettigrew wailed in panic and pain, and James launched himself from his small circle of safety toward the noise. His body morphed amidst the storm of dust and debris, and he delighted as his massive antlers found the soft flesh of his former friend's gut. He twisted and jerked powerfully, and warm blood slashed across his furred face. Pettigrew dropped both wands, and the stink of his bowels filled the air. James shifted and rolled away from the wriggling body, plucking his wand from the floor. He dared not stop his desperate scramble.

As he straightened behind the archway, wand at the ready, another cry pierced the insane howl wracking the sitting room. Light raced through the haze, which suddenly cleared. Dust sprinkled to the floor with a sound like rain, and a deep purple organ-rotting curse shot past James' cheek.

"What have you done?!" Voldemort shrieked.

James fought the urge to laugh hysterically as he dared to peek around the heavy jamb, throwing a series of rapid bludgeoning spells at the origin of the cry. The Dark Lord's furious visage twisted. The explosion had done its work, and the epicentre, its location dictated by a combustion of his will and Lily's forethought, had transfigured and launched acid with deadly precision at the intruder. Voldemort's previously handsome face bled in a pattern of red and white patches pocked irregularly beneath a sheet of oozing and ruined skin. One eye stared madly at James, its lid burned away, while the other blinked furiously against the pain doubtlessly racing through it. He kept up his attack through his examination, refusing to waste the opportunity he'd won.

He sent a barrage of spells and animated rubble to attack the dark lord. The air stank of copper and sulphur. He heard a terrified, heartbreaking wail from upstairs, and it spurred him on. He gave no quarter. Vicious blasting, burning and piercing spells rocketed through the air, and soon enough, the dark lord's magic met his in a furious counterattack. Black flames whipped through the air like a striking viper, forcing James to duck and roll away as the fiery whip cut through the heavy arch. Splinters of carbonized wood arced overhead. James threw himself up the stairs, over the baby gate blocking the first riser.

"Lily!" he shouted. "He's here! Take Harry and run!"

He felt flames lick his back, and his vision swum. Moving on instinct and adrenaline, mindless of the ache in his lungs and the pulsing pain in his cheek, James threw curses over his shoulders: bludgeoner, cutting hex, entrail-expeller, flesh-rotter, levitation, blinder, explosion-

His pursuer returned spellfire just as furiously, leaving him to dodge purely by the feel of the magic seeking him out: flayer, piercer, organ-rotter, banisher, blood evaporator – Flashes of colour and light that promised pain or death flew around him or splashed off hastily conjured shields or obstacles. Finally he reached the landing.

" _AVADA KADAVRA!"_

James ducked, but Voldemort had anticipated the dodge. The sickly green curse flashed over the young man's head, only to hit the polished silver plaque mounted on the wall before him. He saw it ricochet and jerked to the side in a desperate attempt to roll out of the way.

Voldemort sighed from the bottom of the stairs and idly waved his wand at his bloodied face. Silence settled around him, belying the violence of their struggle. The dark lord fished a potion from his robes. He tipped it down his throat with a wince, and his flesh bubbled like melting wax. When it settled, his features were restored to their previous beauty. He glanced over his shoulder to the archway where Peter Pettigrew stared blindly into space, body twitching as he slowly bled to death in a pool of his own insides. The rat's master frowned slightly, weighing his options for a moment before throwing a casual spell at him. Pettigrew's ruptured, stinking intestines knitted themselves back together, and a moment later, returned to their proper place within him. Another spell repaired the skin, and a quick pair of switching spells deposited the contents of two small phials into the near-dead man's stomach. A quick shock restarted his heart, and Voldemort sneered, satisfied he still had an inconspicuous spy at his disposal. With the fool's survival ensured, his lord turned back to his true goal.

After the Potters' surprising defences in the sitting room, Voldemort proceeded more slowly up the stairs and down the corridor, casting detection spells as he went. Photos displayed in neatly hung frames formed tidy clusters along the way, interrupting the floral wallpaper. Finally, he felt a thrill of unfamiliar magic as he came upon a wide, arched door painted with slender trees in varying shades of emerald and moss. Magic-animated animals darted amongst their trunks and canopies. He inhaled appreciatively, and his skin tingled painfully in response to the caress of the powerful magic woven into the very wood.

He smirked.

Lily Potter was no fool, and if he were a normal wizard, or even a merely gifted one, he imagined the woman could easily remain indefinitely within her carefully constructed enchantment, assuming she had enough food and water to sustain her. Fortunately, he had long surpassed the limitations of lesser sorcerers, and he only had to overpower her magic long enough to pass the barrier. He ran his fingers across the painted wood. It burned to the touch, making him shiver with pleasure.

"You weave beautiful magic, Lily Evans Potter," he called to her while his wand went to work.

His left hand traced patterns and symbols in time to his instrument, which danced gracefully over the paint. The dried layer of oil and pigment bent to his will, peeling away in solid layers as if cut from paper with a pair of shears. Slowly, he revealed the naked holly beneath, which nearly shimmered with silver-filled runes. The arrays sprawled across the grain in swirling spirals, light zinging along the inscriptions so as to make them appear in motion. The dark lord took a moment to admire the painstakingly etched arrays. Futhark and Elder Futhark wove with the graceful lines and curves of ancient Arabic and Sanskrit. Their maker had filled the spaces between the characters, too, with minutely rendered hieroglyphs. He found himself briefly reminded of a sculptor who carved grains of rice into microscopic towers and similar nonsense. These were no frivolous constructions, however.

She had designed the enchantments for vicious protection, to rend soul from body for any who wished her child harm. Voldemort found words of pain, of torment and revenge laid there. He tasted blood in the silver, hers and her husbands, no doubt, designed to strengthen and charge the runes. Still, they would do little to stop him.

"You're as clever as they come, aren't you?" he laughed. "And savage, too, it seems."

He carefully worked a few transfigurations, rearranging a set of runes here and there, transforming them to disable a spell designed to turn a man inside out, beginning with his genitalia. He made a mental note to remember the spell for his own use.

"That's what happens when you mess with a mother's kid, you son of a Gaunt," her hard voice answered. "I wonder, do your bootlickers know you're an inbred bastard?"

Voldemort's wand paused over a particularly complicated pattern, and mild annoyance coloured his tone.

"I wondered whether you knew," he hummed blandly. "But I think you'll be disappointed to know I don't resent it as you believe. My parents were products of their respective upbringings, but I, a result of who they were, would not have risen to what I am now without them. The Gaunts with their insanity and depravity, and the Riddles for their callous disregard of the starving village around them, relying on rations to survive – Both were shameful in their own ways, and so both died. You misunderstand my motives, I think."

He frowned, pouring his focus into another tricky enchantment. Beyond the barrier, he heard a child's scared cries.

"People are self-serving things," he remarked. "I wage war to serve a greater purpose, and the methods I use are merely the least expensive means to an end. Really, we'd make great allies, you know, if you'd only relent. We could eliminate the disparity in wealth in our world and the muggles'. We could return the earth to the Eden it should be, achieve heights unseen since Merlin. Think of what could be done, young Lily."

The wizard smirked as several arrays darkened all at once. Only a few remained, now.

"You've no right to make that decision for others," the woman within declared with conviction. "And you're mad if you think you'll win purely through violence. You should know! The muggles will retaliate with everything they've got, and when the fallout settles, there won't be a world left for you to rule! You're outnumbered, and shields won't stop bullets or bombs."

"Ah, but you've tried muggle methods, remember?" Voldemort laughed. "And frankly, I don't care how long it takes. I assure you, I'll outlive my opposition, and those who remain will regard me as their God."

The shimmering runes brightened, then faltered for a scant second, but it was enough. Voldemort stepped through the door as if it were made of air. Pins and needles shot across his skin, and despite the sharp discomfort, he smiled.

"Your cleverness wasn't quite enough, it seems," he laughed, and the shield rose again behind him while he advanced on the lovely young mother standing beyond.

Her vibrant eyes flashed hatefully at him, unyielding, as she backed against the yellow-painted crib behind her. He heard soft whimpers and snuffling.

"Where is your wand?" Voldemort tutted mockingly, twirling his own. "Did you not wish to demonstrate the virtues of a mother's righteous retribution?"

She scoffed, her bravado unflinching despite the rapid pulse beneath the pale skin of her throat.

"You've survived in a vacuum, you've been torn apart by shrapnel, and I put a bullet in your brain," Lily ground out. "You and I both know anything I could do with my wand wouldn't be enough."

Voldemort, his handsome features restored to perfection, smiled at her with a mockery of demureness and swept into a bow as if to thank her for a great compliment. She grimaced, and her retreat halted with her back pressed to the crib's rails. Her arms went behind her to hold her child in place. Tears flowed silently over her cheeks.

"Move over, woman," the Dark Lord offered silkily. "You needn't perish for Potter's spawn. You're only twenty-two, aren't you? You've not even reached your peak. I can make you forget all of this pain, all of your suffering."

He stepped closer, his wand still held casually in his hand, his features still twisted in a cold approximation of sympathy.

"I can wash away young James' screams, your parents' deaths, everything you regret, and as to your child, I am sure Severus would delight in filling your womb with another. Let me have your boy. I will let him feel no pain, and then, you will forget."

Lily shook her head. Behind her, the baby's fussing grew to persistent cries.

"Move aside, stupid girl," Voldemort snarled, his patience expended.

The lingering sting of the wards sharpened suddenly to a piercing pain that burned his skin, and his almost-kind expression twisted into a snarl.

"Kill me!" the woman spat back. "Torture me. Do whatever you want to me, but you can't have my baby."

The child shrieked in response to her shout, and the shrill noise lanced the Dark Lord's ears.

"As you wish it!"

The green flash left his wand, and the woman crumpled to the floor with her emerald eyes still open. Her lungs released the last of her breath, and her lovely, deep red hair settled around her head like a fiery halo. The child screamed louder, finally revealed to Voldemort's view. Its pudgy hand grasped at the railing, and its tiny feet clumsily pushed against the bar as if to climb over. Voldemort sighed when the child's magic responded to its desperation, and a loud _CRACK!_ brought it to its mother's side. The baby crawled over the dead woman's breast, and its small hands patted her rapidly cooling face, tugging on a lock of her hair when the action elicited no response.

The Dark Lord huffed at the waste. He thought she might have matched Dumbledore had she been given the time and training.

"It's your turn, little one," he murmured to the babe.

He smiled at the toddler as he withdrew from his cloak a shimmering, blue sphere, and the child's unbearable squalling quieted a little at the sight of the smoothly polished stone.

"This was my first toy, and the first item I ever crafted entirely from magic," he murmured.

A flash from a small silver blade slashed open the pad of his forefinger, and the wizard held the child almost tenderly as he smeared the blood across its brow, leaving a lightning-shaped rune behind.

"The other boys had marbles, and I liked them enough that I took many as payment for petty crimes, or as pretty prizes for deeds done in my service," he explained while wielding his wand again.

Light danced around the child and the stone, then about himself.

"I wanted a shooter, though, and the other boys' often bore cracks or other flaws. I saw a piece of lapis lazuli at the museum on an outing, and I thought it perfect for making my own.

He levitated the woman to slump over the crib's railing, and the child stood shakily to tug at the leg of her trousers while Voldemort cleared the floor. He vanished the circular, sun-shaped rug before burning a circle into the floorboards. He paced its circumference, muttering as flashes of flame charred the wood and released the acrid smell of floor polish in puffs of black smoke. It took nearly an hour, in which the baby finally calmed and fell into a fitful sleep at its mother's feet, where she dangled, folded double, over the heavy railing. When the circle and its runic array lay completed, he levitated the child to its centre, where it froze atop a complicated series of symbols and lines. Its head lolled in sleep, and the salt on its pudgy pink cheeks glinted subtly under the gas-lit chandelier hanging above them. Voldemort placed the marble beside it before vanishing his clothes and the child's at once. The man turned to take his place inside the circle, and blinked.

"You're a girl child," he said almost accusingly after assuring himself of the naked girl's features.

It shivered and rolled, before waking and resuming its squalls.

Voldemort sneered and his wrist snapped up. A raven of dark smoke materialized in midair.

"The child's female. Kill that healer and hunt down Moody," he snarled. "Loosen his tongue and prepare for an attack on Longbottom Hall."

The construct disappeared, and the wizard pinched the bridge of his nose as he glared at the screaming infant, its face turning scarlet.

"It's so difficult to get reliable intelligence these days," he huffed. "For the great obstacle your mother made herself, I suppose it would be too much to think she had the decency to birth a boy. Ah, well. No matter."

He shrugged, summoning the marble to himself. He sneered as he stepped out of the ritual circle.

"Goodbye, little Potter. _Avada Kadavra._ "

The green bolt left his wand, its light sparked and fizzled to nothingness, and pain unlike anything he'd felt assaulted his senses. Roiling agony washed over him, as if he had been dipped in boiling oil and quartered at the same moment. Around him, the floor, ceilings and walls glowed bloody red, and Voldemort watched with horror as the dead woman's body straightened and floated toward the stucco overhead. Her bleached lips fell open, her glassy eyes glowed the same colour as the spell that killed her, and an unholy shriek drove a spike through his brain, drowning out the terrified cries of her child.

Light surrounded the babe, cocooning it until Voldemort could not make out her finer features. His vision blurred. He tasted blood. He smelled smoke.

The horrible noise rang through his skull. They burned paths through his thoughts, preventing him from even attempting a defence. Something warm and wet slid over his ears, neck and face, but even his ruptured eardrums had no bearing on the words echoing through his brain.

" _Ye who would defy Death His due, whose shattered soul clings like leaches to this realm, preying on the innocent and devouring all that is good, I give my Life and Magic to banish you hence-"_

Voldemort felt his throat strain with a scream he could not hear. He felt his body twist and jerk. He burned. His heart beat frantically against his ribcage while the skin covering his hands flaked and peeled, returning to their burned state, then slowly, painfully, regressing through sixty-two years of damage. His hair greyed and fell to the floor, and his lips cracked and stung as bloody foam burbled from between them. His fingers jerked, and his wand clattered away from him.

He stared at it helplessly, and at the trembling child toward which it rolled. The girl's skin glowed with scarlet runes, now. He began crawling toward her across the floor, dragging himself over the evidence of his aborted ritual.

" _I call to thee thy scattered parts-"_

Apparitions swam around him, taking on the faces of those he sacrificed to his immortality. Their magic sank into his flesh, slowing him, cutting wizard captured the babe in one arm, and his claw-like hand trembled as he struggled to paint her chest, arms, feet, belly, and face with more runes. Spots of darkness invaded his vision. He fought desperately with his robes to retrieve his knife, muttering ancient words he could not hear, but felt burning his abused vocal chords. Blood splashed across what remained of his skin as he slashed open his wrist. His uninjured hand found her face again, and the child tried to jerk out of his pincer-like grip on her tiny jaw, but his determination won over her fear even in his weakened state. He forced her mouth open, held his wrist to her mouth, and the child swallowed choked and then swallowed down several gulps of the metallic fluid. The child's hot tears slid over his fingers to sting his ruined flesh.

" _-And Death shall pull thee to His bosom!"_

He screamed.

* * *

Miles away, a young man shot up in bed, clutching his arm. It faded quickly, but when he pulled his hand away from the suddenly pale mark, he found blood on his palm. A gash long since healed had split across his skin to cry beads of scarlet onto his sheets. Severus Snape's heart clenched, and he sobbed.

* * *

In London, another dark-haired youth tore away from the woman wrapped around him with a gasp as a sting gnawed into his chest. He hissed a curse, rolling out of bed.

"Where are you going?" the svelte brunette moaned, her legs spread in invitation.

Sirius sent her a dark look and yanked on his jeans, not bothering to find his pants. He tugged on his discarded shirt, shoved his feet into his boots, and moments later, apparated away with his wand in hand.

* * *

 _BOOM!_

Pettigrew jerked awake with a squeak. He clutched at his belly as the last moments he remembered flashed across his mind's eye, prompted by the drying blood marring his skin, clothes, and the floor beneath him. The gas lights flared and went out all at once, the glass containing them shattering, and the cottage around him lurched violently. Plaster and splinters of wood rained down on him, and he rapidly transformed to avoid a chunk of ceiling. He paused before the door as his nose worked. With the worst of the tremors settled, the wizard took the stairs toward the angry crackle sounding overhead. He stopped at the top of the landing to retrieve his wand from James' left hand, already cold to the touch, before proceeding to the crookedly hanging door at the corridor's end.

A baby's cries filled his ears. Stepping carefully, Peter picked his way through the scene of destruction toward the child. He plucked up his master's pale yew wand and stared in shock at the charred, bloodied body sprawled on the floor beside the fussing baby. The rest of the room lay in complete shambles around them. Toys, furniture, and books smouldered, and behind the crib, an enormous, smoking hole looked out onto the village down the lane.

Voldemort's dull, scarlet eyes stared vacantly at a large, cracked blue marble nearby. On the opposite edge of the debris-free circle, Lily's red-flaked baby curled near its mother's head. Her peachy, freckled face remained unmarred, and Peter could almost imagine her blinking, sitting up, and taking her child into her arms. He glanced again at his master's body, where it lay naked and oozing burgundy from a litany of wounds.

Peter licked his lips, glancing between the woman and her killer. His mind raced.

Downstairs, he heard the unmistakable noise of apparition. With one last look at his master, he shoved the Dark Lord's wand into his pocket, transformed, and fled through the hole, down the rough stone wall, and into the garden.

The cottage door slammed open, and a moment later, an agonized voice cried out.

"Lily-"

The sound left Severus' quivering lips as a broken sob. He ignored the Dark Lord's body after an initial disgusted glance in favour of gathering the dead woman into his arms. The baby, who had nuzzled between her shoulder and ear, whimpered pitifully at his side. The hook-nosed young man sniffled loudly, his shoulders shuddering with half-choked tears, as he gently closed the woman's accusing green eyes and laid her gently before the crib. A matching pair watched him miserably, forcing him to turn away from the child that bore them. He buried his face in his hands until his weeping subsided, and when finally he could breathe without exhaling a sob, he picked up the trembling toddler.

Despite the chilled air quickly cooling the devastated nursery, her skin burned beneath his fingers. A wave of his wand revealed the lingering traces of his childhood friends' magic, but hints of something else clung to the babe. He pushed back her downy-soft, black fringe to trace his wand over the bleeding wound there. A numbing charm followed, and he frowned when his diagnostic charm returned gibberish. He sighed, and gently traced it again with a rudimentary skin-knitting spell. The child's body relaxed a bit with her pain diminished, and her red-rimmed eyes drooped. His eyes stung as he examined her sweet face – too much like Lily's when she was a child.

Severus wrapped her tightly in his cloak and began a quick search through the room. He located an overstuffed bag under her crib filled with baby supplies. A moist wipe gently removed the flaked blood smearing the child's otherwise perfect skin, and a switching spell changed her nappy and clothed her in a clean jumper and stretchy leggings.

She curled into the crook of his shoulder. His heart ached. She could have been his, were it not for his stupidity and cowardice. He considered for a moment while the dark details of the last two years flitted across his mind. The twice cursed prophesy, the headmaster's rigid vows, the Dark Lord's furious pursuit of its subjects.

He had not heard the thing in its entirety.

Hate, white-hot and bitter, overcame him as his carefully organised mind unravelled the sense of unease that had followed him since he swore himself to Dumbledore. He had always wondered how he had managed to hear something so vital without the headmaster's knowledge. He found the insidious fog in his memories of that night once he knew to seek it out in the archives of his mind. He fought back a curse when he found nearly an hour of his life to be missing. As quickly as he wondered why the headmaster would leave what knowledge did, his mind supplied the answer. The child squirmed in his arms, and he glanced down.

" _Accio_ Lily's daughter's birth certificate," he breathed.

To his surprise, the bag trembled and belched out a folder that slapped him in the face. His heart clenched as he stared at the label, and his resolve strengthened.

"It seems you prepared for every eventuality," he murmured with a glance at Lily's corpse.

He thumbed open the envelope with one hand, the baby still clutched against his chest and shoulder. The documents inside reinforced the conclusion he had reached, for the girl's records bore not her father's name, but her mother's alone. Beneath the date, time, and the baby's weight, the page held the stamp and information for Saint Anthony's Medical Centre. He found Lily's birth certificate as well, along with a large envelope of notes, a book of cheques, a deposit-box key: everything a child might need for a fresh start without her mother or father. Aside from the documents, he also found Lily's driver's license, a car key, and a few toys, both muggle and magical. He breathed deep and downed a tiny phial of golden potion. A feeling of confidence came over him, and with one last glance at the room around him, he vanished the magical items from the changing bag, spun, and apparated to Spinner's End.

Cramped, narrow row houses greeted him when Severus opened his eyes. Though it was not yet too late for trick-or-treaters, no other soul lingered on the cracked pavements lining the road. With a dark sigh, Severus took a path he had not in years down two streets to a building with no lights or decorations brightening its dreary garden or façade. Her parents' car, an old Volkswagen Beetle with cheery yellow paint, straddled the narrow driveway. A flick of his wand unlocked it, and he quickly transfigured a car seat for the baby. She slept through his terse arrangement of the safety belts through the back of the seat and across her small body, for which he was grateful.

The car started on his first try, and he watched in satisfaction as the petrol gage's needle swung the opposite way. It had a full tank.

The wizard, relying entirely on the magic fuelling his luck to guide him, drove well into the wee hours of the morning, past smoke stacks, out of Cokeworth, and into the countryside. He drove south until he found the motorway into London, and he continued driving until he'd passed from Surrey into Crawley. Still, magic led him on until forests surrounded him. Finally, he found a tiny village with a handsome manor inn, a small chapel, and one pub within its confines. Nothing stirred in the twilight of early morning. After a quick examination of its features, Severus stopped a short way from the inn. He cast a notice-me-not charm on himself, the car, and the child, and got to work.

Severus unbelted the child, depositing her by the road beneath warming and shielding charms, before ripping the safety belt that had secured her car seat from its housing. He put Lily's driver's license in the visor, securing it with a weak sticking charm. The wizard left the baby's changing bag in the front seat. Finally, he summoned samples of earth, stone and water to his side, where they floated expectantly. He plucked a long red hair from one of the seats and guided it to join the hovering ingredients. Severus closed his eyes, and his wand cut through the air. The materials transfigured to his will, and when he opened his eyes again, a copy of Lily's corpse lied before him. He deposited it in the driver's seat, belted her in, and after a few diagnostics, completed her internal transfigurations until she matched her apparent age on the cellular level. Another spell warmed her to the appropriate temperature, and an imperius curse made the homunculus start the car. He stepped away, shut the door, removed the notice-me-not spell on the car, and the vehicle turned in the road to disappear around the bend leading up to the inn.

A moment later, lights gleamed through the trees, and Severus heard the auto's engine shift rapidly into high gear. The stretch of road in front of the inn allowed it to gain velocity until, when Severus released his curse, the car careened off the road and head-on into a tree. It impacted with a sickening, metallic sound, and the old oak groaned. The child began crying. Lights went on in the manor. A quick, sharp bludgeoner followed by a summoning spell pulled the glass from the rear windscreen, and a levitation charm deposited the baby's car seat on its side among the sparkling debris. He removed the spells on her as her cries rose in volume. He heard the heavy door of the manor slam open. A muggle woman in a dressing gown and curlers ran down the lane. Severus watched unnoticed from the roadside as the muggles rescued the child, and sirens wailed in the distance.

"Goodbye, Dahlia Evans."


	3. Welcome to Marie Curie's

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to the author and his/her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

Q & A for my wonderful reviewers:

1) Dahlia's name: In canon, Harry got his name presumably from his father's side. JK said one of his I-don't-know-how-many-greats grandfathers was named Henry. It's equally likely someone was named "Henry" or called "Harry" in Lily's family, since it's a pretty common name. He got his middle name from his father. I chose "Dahlia" because it followed Lily's mother's naming tradition of calling her daughters after flowers. Her middle name, like in canon, will come from the Potter side of her family, though you'll have to wait to see that.

2) Snape's actions: The motivations behind what Snape does will become clear as the story progresses, though, like in canon, the answer may take a while to become apparent.

3) Why 'Evans'?: I hope that's mostly clear, now, from chapter 2. The name 'Potter' will be applied to Dahlia in the not so distant future.

4) Ridiculous?: The canon's about a systematically abused little boy saving a world of adults (all armed with deadly weapons) from MechaWizardHitlerStalin, all without Cold War era surveillance tipping off the muggle leaders to the truth. Of course it's ridiculous. That's why it's fun. Less ridiculous works of fiction can be found in _To Kill a Mockingbird, Atonement, In Cold Blood_ , and others. The examples I provided are all too likely given human condition and history, but those stories don't have happy endings, do they?

Since these were the first reviews I've received, I thought I'd go ahead and answer here. As things heat up and I receive more (hopefully), I'll not spam my A/N section unless it's something that really sticks with me.

 **TRIGGER WARNING for portrayals of physical and emotional child abuse.**

* * *

Chapter Three – Welcome to Marie Curie's

* * *

October 1989

Neville sniffled and winced when it made a wet, sucking sound too loud for the quiet of predawn. His grandmother gave him a sharp look, but the man at his side, a tall, unsmiling figure of noble bearing and long, wavy black hair, clasped his small shoulder in sympathy and support as both stared at the smooth ebony headstones.

He didn't think he could bear these monthly visits without Sirius Black. He knew better than to complain, though, and he knew his grandmother's insistence wasn't undeserved. He felt lucky to have lived, and he owed it to his parents and godparents to pay his respects.

On his left lay James Charlus Potter, and on the right, Lily Elizabeth Evans Potter: The-Witch-Who-Won. Neville did not remember much from that time, but everyone knew the story.

His godmother first tried to blow up You-Know-Who on his first open attack on Diagon Alley in 1978. She also took out a bit of Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlour, but she fixed it after, so Fortescue had not minded, much, Sirius said. It had been worth it, apparently, to see the Death Eater's reactions. Unfortunately, You-Know-Who pulled himself back together. Sirius told Neville she tried to kill the Dark Lord six or seven other times, two of which with modified muggle methods, to no effect aside from winning herself a spot at the top of the Dark Lord's black list.

It was not until Lily's pregnancy, Sirius told him, that the Potters finally went into hiding, though even that did not stop Lily researching ways to stop him.

Sirius had been first among the aurors to arrive that night, after The Dark Lord killed James. They had found the remains of an extremely powerful protection ward hastily altered to a sacrificial ritual, the Dark Lord, and Lily's body. The Unspeakables called to the scene concluded the baby, whose traces they detected near the Dark Lord, must have been destroyed, since the explosion had centred around him, and the Dark Lord lay nearly unrecognisable at the centre of the ritual circle.

Neville once asked why anyone would kill her own baby. Sirius had taken a long time to answer, but finally explained as well as he could, with that same bitter voice he always used.

"Not anyone could have. Evans, though," he shuddered. "Lily would have done it if she knew there wasn't a way out for her or Prongslet. She was the vindictive type. Always told me if he took her down, she'd do her damndest to take him with her. If she didn't think Prongslet would've survived, or if-"

He had swallowed and looked away.

"If the bastard had started torturing him to try to make Lily do what he wanted, then… Well. Whatever she did stopped him. It's our job to make sure we make the most of the time she gave us."

And so, on the first of every month, Neville, his gran, and Sirius came to Godric's Hollow.

"They would have been proud of you," Sirius said tiredly, breaking the heavy silence that inevitably settled over their graveyard gatherings.

Madam Longbottom sniffed, and the gentleman resisted the urge to glare at her dismissive mien. Instead, he gave the boy's shoulder another gently bracing squeeze.

"When she wasn't kicking arse-"

"Mr Black!"

He smirked a little at the matron, and Neville held back a nervous laugh.

"Excuse me, 'kicking _bum_ ,' or hexing Prongs within an inch of his life, Lily was one of the kindest people you could meet. She didn't care what colours you wore or where you came from," he continued. "As long as you were kind and true, she'd be the first person to smile at you and make you feel needed. Alice was the same way. Less hex-y, though, even if you discount your dad's easygoing personality. I didn't know anyone who didn't like him."

"Thanks, Cousin Sirius," Neville murmured. "Should I make our offerings now?"

The man gave him a stiff almost-smile and stepped away with a ruffle of the child's mousy blonde hair.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Go on, son."

The small, round-faced boy clumsily dug into his magically expanded breast pocket to lay their gifts. He replaced last month's altar photo of Neville's first attempt at riding a broom with one of himself in Alice's favourite greenhouse. Sirius helpfully banished the browned garland of herbs and flowers framing the stone, and the boy arranged a fresh wreath of rosemary and lavender against its base. He followed these with a pair of candles to frame the photograph. A wave of a wand lit the pale wicks.

The polished stone reflected a pale imitation of their cheery light. The sky overhead rumbled a bit. Neville glanced away from Lily Potter's headstone as the wind rustled the first of autumn's leafy casualties. Sparse shoots of sun-browned grass poked up between the other headstones. The air smelled of rain and weighed clammily against his skin, slowly saturating his robes and shirt with sticky moisture.

Everything seemed a study in shades of decomposition: grey, muddy brown, mossy green. He couldn't help comparing the place to his parents' graves at Longbottom Hall.

Before his grandfather died a couple years ago, he told Neville how Frank had planted the wisteria tree just beyond the edges of the gardens as an engagement gift to Alice. Neville remembered smiling at the mention of her affinity for nature-based magic, which had allowed her to nurture the sapling until it towered over the grounds in a massive tangle of wild, twisting boughs hung with thousands of cascading purple blooms. Sometimes, in his best dreams, he found himself staring up at them while she sang to him, and he wondered whether she had taken him there as a baby.

He would imagine it while he visited their burial sites.

Neville's mum and dad lay side-by-side beneath a wide, flat white marble slab nestled amongst the sprawling roots on the tree's north-facing side. The marker itself simply listed their names, birthdays, and death dates, but the beauty around it made up for its simplicity. The roots' rising and falling ridges and dips lured visitors to sit and lounge beneath the swaying boughs. The constantly blooming wisteria showered the grave with soft petals. It was a welcoming place of remembrance – An enduring reminder of his parents' love and legacy.

The small plot in Godric's Hollow held no such warmth. The cold black stones held Lily's name on one side, James' on the other, and 'Prongslet' in the centre, whose death followed its birth by only fifteen months and a day.

"Cousin Sirius?" he asked softly. "Why didn't you put his given name?"

The round-faced boy turned to stare at the ex-auror, whose pale face crumpled.

"Oh" he sighed and glanced to Augusta.

She eyed him beadily but provided neither assistance nor opinion.

"I never knew his proper name," he tried again. "Lily always called him 'Prongslet' and James thought it'd be funny to make me guess what they were going to call him, and Lily would exact what she called an 'idiot's tax' every time I got it wrong."

He frowned a little bitterly.

"I think she was peeved I wanted her to have a boy so badly - I never guessed girls' names. I'm no good with girls. She was still miffed with me when Pronsglet was born, so she made a game of dressing the poor kid in skirts and stuff every other day and little baby trousers the rest of the time. Anyhow, I got sick of shelling out galleons. The only reason I'm sure of the gender at all is because she wouldn't have kept it up for so long if I'd been wrong. I tried to find his birth certificate, but the house-"

He waved down the lane, where, on the edge of the town, a crowd of wizards and witches lined up before the burnt down remains of what used to be a home. Neville stared at them for several moments, and he knew Sirius was thinking the same things he was. The pilgrims would write messages on the plaque, place a few flowers, and then go back home to set off fireworks and drink warm butterbeer. Some might visit a relative's grave, but most would go to a Hallowe'en Masque or to the Samhain festival in Diagon Alley, where wizards and witches would raise glasses to a those who paid the cost of peace with blood.

And he would never know his god-brother's name.

Neville breathed a long sigh and watched the dancing, warped reflections of candlelight against the highly polished black stone until he felt his chest unclench. Sirius's large hand squeezed his shoulder.

"Ready to go?"

The boy nodded, but his head drooped as he turned from the grave.

"I just wish I could do more for them, you know?" he mumbled. "It's so dreary, here."

Silence met his wistful comment, and the boy looked up in question at the two adults, who stood frozen far longer than was natural. Augusta held a gloved hand over her mouth, and her eyes gleamed with fierce pride. Sirius held no such compunctions. Tears streamed over his cheeks, catching in the corners of his wide grin. He pulled the increasingly alarmed boy into his chest.

"They'd be so proud," the man choked. "So proud of you, Nev-"

Neville had to struggle a bit to turn around in his cousin's emotional hug, but he finally managed to twist enough to see.

A hundred dahlias bloomed from the cold, wet earth in a riot of pale purple and white. Their green stems continued to poke through the dirt along with sweet-smelling new grass until the heavy blossoms had overtaken not only the area around the Potters' headstone, but every grave in the aged churchyard. The little boy's dumbfounded expression stretched into a wide smile, and he felt Sirius press a kiss to his crown. His cheeks flushed with pleasure and mild embarrassment. Fluttery hope warmed his chest.

"I told you it'd happen eventually," the man crowed. "You're going to be an amazing wizard. Don't ever let me catch you saying otherwise."

Augusta smoothed her hand over her grandson's hair and smiled thinly at his hopeful face.

"Come along now, dear," she said primly, her voice a little gruff. "We still need to visit the Black crypt."

"Yes Gran," Neville agreed far more cheerfully than he would have otherwise.

Before she could lead him through the squeaky wrought iron gate, however, the child looked back at the garden.

"Bye Godmother," he called softly. "Everyone loves and misses you, Uncle James, and your baby. Thank you."

The others did not comment on his greeting, but Neville felt lighter than he ever remembered.

* * *

November 1989

The girl with the lightning bolt scar could not understand the goings-on that fateful night. She could comprehend little save for flashes of light and colour, or in her worst nightmares, sound. She woke to the noise of sirens and the babble of too many voices. The cacophony reminded her of a horrible voice, screaming, screaming, while pain, hot and sharp, dug into her skull. She heard her name, shrieked in the woman's voice, the syllables reverberating through her ribcage like echoing clangs of a great bell.

" _Dahlia!"_

She sat bolt upright with a gasp, and her eyes blinked rapidly against the bright sunlight streaming through the blinds covering her small window.

"Dahlia?"

A knock accompanied the call, that time, and the girl slid quickly from beneath her covers to answer.

"Good morning," she squeaked as she opened the heavy wooden door. "Sorry, I must not have heard the alarm."

Her awakener, a woman with bright hazel eyes and warm, golden-brown skin that reminded her of caramel lollies, smiled understandingly and pressed a neatly folded stack of clothes into Dahlia's hands.

"I assumed as much," she hummed. "Go on and dress. I'll pack up a bit of breakfast for you before the others eat it all, but don't dawdle. It's not every day you start at a new school, after all."

The child nodded her head, and her long, messy black hair bobbed around her face.

"Thanks, Mrs Granger," Dahlia said gratefully. "I'll be just a minute."

She disappeared into her room again and quickly made her bed, combed her unruly locks, and washed in the small sink at the corner of her room. She tried very hard not to think while she brushed her teeth, but having such an active mind, it was difficult, especially when she considered the events that brought her to this crossroads.

Odd things sometimes happened in Dahlia's presence, and those odd instances had taken her from her last school, just as it had from the three families that had tried adopting her.

The first couple adopted her only weeks after she arrived at her first orphanage, and they filed for her adoption shortly thereafter. The couple, a pair of music professors at Cambridge, had prepared a lovely nursery for Dahlia once they finished filing the paperwork. The upstairs room of their modest row house had overflowed with plush animals, dolls and books, and Dahlia thought, from what her case worker had told her, it would have been an ideal household.

She herself could not recall what happened, exactly, but she read the professors' interview notes when she was old enough to be allowed. The couple apparently had an argument one night, and she had become upset. When the shouting continued despite her distressed wails, the light fixtures throughout the house began trembling and blinking. The furniture skittered across the floor, and all at once, every piece of glass in the house shattered with explosive force. The couple, startled out of their anger, had gone to the nursery only to find themselves on the edge of a localised hurricane. Toys, books, chunks of wall, and sparkling bits of glass spun around the child's crib, where Dahlia's flushed, tear-streaked face peeked over the top of the railing. The wood smouldered under her chubby little fists.

The Professors Morris described the event in detail, along with smaller instances of finding items or treats in Dahlia's hands they knew with absolute certainty remained on high shelves or behind doors the toddler could not open. Her caseworker took meticulous notes despite her disbelief, put a black mark in the Morris' file, and again found a place for her charge in yet another orphanage.

The second time someone adopted her, she managed to stay with her prospective parents for ten months. She remembered a lot of laughter and thought this, too, would have been a wonderful home. Despite their non-traditional union, the Doctors Dent reportedly made ideal parents. At four, she even recalled some small, odd instances of floating books or toys her adoptive dads pointedly ignored. But then, Henry received a cancer diagnosis, and in the fearful month that followed, the odd happenings took on a tendency toward violence, exploding glass, spontaneous combustion, and melting plastics. The sixth time her guardians found her amidst a circle of grotesquely misshapen, gooey toys, they took her to social services. Her caseworker took no interview after writing down their reason for giving her up. The men had been doting caretakers and had filmed more than one less frightening occurrence of strangeness. Coupled with the increasing stress and expense of battling cancer, Dr Jonas Dent had asserted Dahlia cost too much as an emotional investment.

She did not blame them, and when they won their fight against disease, the couple made a point of transferring what remained of the school fund they had started to their almost-daughter.

She celebrated her seventh birthday before another couple fostered her. As it had in the past, things started well enough. The Vicar Michael and his wife, Julia, lived a quiet life in the country, working with a small parish and its parishioners to improve their small, agricultural community. By then, Dahlia had become fully aware of her strange ability. She understood, at least, how easily the tingly, ear-buzzing power reacted when she became upset. She had grown tall enough to reach most things, so endeavoured never to be lazy. She read and spoke better than other children her age, so she mostly avoided succumbing to upset as a mode of communication.

Unfortunately, seven-year-olds are not always in control of how they feel, and one day, Dahlia's power lashed out against an older girl at school. The nine-year-old had made fun of her homemade dress. It was the first new thing she personally remembered receiving, and her foster mum had made it specifically for her. No one actually saw her glue the girl's feet and shoes to the pavement, but as no one else was around, she had been blamed. Her foster parents had lectured her on forgiveness and read to her about turning the other cheek, but Dahlia's sense of injustice grew until she felt it burning in her mouth and zinging across her skin.

The Bible caught fire.

Vicar and Mrs Covington had stared at her fearfully, and Dahlia panicked. She had ruined something precious to them, caused trouble, and feared they would send her away. She began crying, apologising through her tears, while the house around them descended into chaos.

She must have passed out sometime within her terrified haze, and when she woke, she found herself in bed. Mrs Covington (Dahlia had not been comfortable with calling her 'mum,' yet) cooed soothing words at her while running a gentle hand through her dark hair.

"There we are," she gave a strained smile. "How are you feeling?"

"I-" Dahlia whimpered, feeling tears in her burning eyes. "I'm _so_ sorry. Please don't send me away! I'll be the best daughter, ever, so please-"

"Oh, sweet lamb," the woman sighed, pulling the little girl into her arms. "Everything's all right. We understand. It's not your fault, and we'll never give up on you."

At first, Dahlia felt elated at her foster-mother's promise. She enthusiastically agreed with her and the vicar's plan to exorcise the strange power from her. She very much wanted to be free of her fear, and she wanted to be a real daughter to a good family. The vicar conferred with his bishop, who came himself to meet with Dahlia. A visit to a therapist concluded she suffered from no discernible disorders or illnesses, save from insecurities and self-esteem issues common to orphans, and at the end of the month, the bishop returned to their small country home with an exorcist. She had read about exorcism in the library, with Mrs Covington's help, and she had been assured no harm would come to her through the process. Still, when the gaunt-faced priest entered her room, she could not help the thrill of fear down her spine. The windows, as they were wont to do when she experienced upset, rattled ominously in their frames. The clergymen shared meaningful glances over neatly arranged texts and papers.

The ritual of exorcism went smoothly, enough. She repeated the words when required, took the bishop's blessing, and a few weeks later, sobbed as she tried to explain how she turned her teacher's hair blue.

The bishop recommended another exorcist, who also failed in her attempt to cure Dahlia of her unholy powers.

Weeks passed into months, and the vicar became more and more desperate while Dahlia's anxiety mounted. Just before her eighth birthday, the vicar and his wife took their charge to London, where they met the Reverend Joe Morgan.

The reverend, the vicar and his wife explained, came highly recommended in the exorcist community in America, and he had agreed to assist them in exchange for the cost of his travel, room and board.

The reverend, they promised, would cure her.

He stood over six feet tall and possessed an intimidating presence in addition to an extremely thin frame and severe face. He directed her guardians in the rental of a horrible, leaky shack in the middle of the sea, which they sparsely furnished with a few sturdy cots, a metal washing tub, some basic kitchen necessities, and firewood, which they double-wrapped in tarp to keep dry long enough for the damp, lichen-stained fireplace.

An awful thunderstorm raged around the shack on the night of the ritual, itself. The vicar and his wife knelt near the fireplace, their pallid faces shadowed eerily from the orange glow at their backs, as they prayed in soft murmurs for her deliverance. The reverend stood within a chalk outline of a cross on the floor, the points of which featured a fat, pillar candle, respectively. AT the centre of the cross lay a narrow cot, from which hung thick, nylon straps.

As it had before her first exorcism, Dahlia's power flared in time with her anxiety.

"Julia?" she whispered fearfully.

The woman paused in her prayers to envelope the girl in a hug before guiding her gently to the pallet.

"Everything's going to be all right, dear," she assured her. "Have faith in the Lord and His mercy, and you'll be fine."

She lay on the bed reluctantly. Gut-twisting fear nauseated her, and her heart beat too fast. The reverend smoothed her fringe away from her forehead and nodded to the Covingtons.

"Vicar, Ma'am," he solemnly intoned. "The ritual will be highly emotional and possibly dangerous if the Demon possessing her fights its exorcism. It would be best for Dolly, here, if you keep yourselves away. I swear no real harm will touch this child."

The foster parents began a whispered argument while the reverend winched the straps tight across the little girl's chest, around her arms, and over her hips, knees and ankles. With each clack of the clasps, the ringing in Dahlia's ears mounted, and the shack trembled more violently than the thunderstorm could account for.

She heard a clap of thunder, and the candles flared, flames jumping a foot high.

"Please, folks," the reverend rumbled. "We must act before this child's lost to the Devil's grip."

With a final desperate, fearful look at the girl on the bed, the vicar and his wife went upstairs to wait. The candles burned brighter.

Dahlia stared up at the reverend as she counted her breaths, heart hammering away, and head aching from the building pressure.

"O.K., missy," he huffed, smoothing her hair back again. "I can't promise this won't hurt, but it's not you who'll feel the real pain. The demon possessing you has a tight grip on your little soul, so you've got to bear with me. Can you do that?"

Dahlia swallowed back a whimper. She wanted a family. She didn't want whatever power kept preventing that.

"Just tell me what's going on, if you can, please" she managed, scrunching her eyes closed. "I'm not afraid."

"Good girl," the reverend said gruffly.

He straightened to don a stole and to pick up a shabby, well-worn Bible. In his other hand, he carried a moisture-darkened wooden cross. She forced herself to take deeper breaths as he began praying.

Dahlia's chest felt tight.

He called to God, Christ and His angels.

Her skin flashed hot and cold in rapid succession, and the straps seemed to squeeze her tighter. She imagined the strong nylon coiling about her body like a great python squeezing, crushing, until she could no longer breathe.

Her vibrant green eyes snapped open, and she could not hold back her plea.

"Let me up!" she gasped between quick, shallow breaths. "Untie me, please!"

A triumphant gleam came over the reverend's face, but he ignored her in every other way. He continued waving his arms in wild patterns she could not understand, shouting over her terrified cries to continue the ritual. She felt the room spin sideways, and her throat ached with her panicked yells.

"Michael!" she begged shrilly.

She felt something wet splash across the face and jerked her head away from the reverend's cross as he dunked it in a bowl of holy water to flick at her again.

"Julia!" she shrieked. "Julia, please, I don't like this!"

She felt tears cooling on her hot cheeks and snot burning her chapped nose. The metal tub nearby crumpled in on itself with a sickening crunch, and the tiny, dirty windows burst from their frames.

"Do you reject the Devil, child?" the reverend demanding, pressing the cross against her chest with bruising force. "Do you open yourself to God's healing grace?"

"Yes!" she squealed. "Please, please-"

The candles snuffed out, and the bindings holding her to the cot snapped. The straps twisted and writhed, and finally succumbed to blue and white flames sprung from nothing. Dahlia curled in on herself, repeating desperate, pleading apologies through gasping, hiccoughing breaths and choking sobs.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she wailed. "Don't take me back! I can't control it!"

Pain exploded across her cheeks, and strong fingers pressed achingly on her jaw. She fought blindly, her glasses lost sometime before, thrashing on the cot to escape the arms holding her down. Something huge, cold, and unyielding scraped its way past her lips and teeth. A burning scrape seared her throat as she tried desperately to gag and breathe at the same time. The reverend pinched her nose, pushing the tube deeper. Black spots swam across her vision. She could barely hear him shouting over her.

"Demon! be washed from this child of God! Lord Jesus, cleanse your lost lamb!"

She gagged around the tube. Tears poured over the sides of her face and into her hair. The reverend dumped a bowl of holy water down her throat. Her stomach turned. Her nose burned. Something in her snapped. The silent mantra of interwoven apologies, pleas, and memorised prayer fell away beneath the weight of fear and desperation.

 _Save me._

 _Save me._

 _Save me._

She let loose the gate she imagined to hold back the prickling, terrifying power she carried and released her grip on her desire for normalcy.

Suddenly, the priest's restraining arms released her, and the tube in her throat vanished. She covered her ears and closed her eyes as around her, the shack fell apart.

When Dahlia woke, nothing remained of the leaky wooden building. Three drenched, shivering adults stared at her with haunted eyes while she uncurled from her tiny patch of dry floorboards. She looked hollowly from the vicar and his wife to the reverend, whose hands had been wrapped in makeshift bandages.

"I'd like to go back to my case manager, please."

Bruised, exhausted, and with a sore throat, Dahlia rode four hours by train to London. Safiya Granger, a volunteer nurse for the home from which Dahlia's case manager worked, took one look at the purpling marks on her face and arms and the caked blood around her lips before rushing her to bed. Dahlia couldn't help feeling vindictively pleased at the sound of the woman's usually melodic voice screaming at her case manager.

She never heard what happened to the Convingtons, and she never asked why she always had therapy or library time scheduled while the other children went to meet visiting parents-to-be. Instead, she followed her counsellor's advice to study different methods for stress relief and meditation. She recited poetry to herself. She memorised formulae. She built elaborate castles and lands in her head. The accidents stopped, and Dahlia felt hopeful she had seen the last of them. Unburdened by fear, she threw herself wholeheartedly into her studies until, a year later, she found herself reaching her next educational milestone.

She would be attending a girls' private school as a result of her hard work, starting secondary school a year early, and she felt tentatively hopeful, removed from the other children at the home, she might find a friend.

The ten-year-old wiped the water from her face, smoothed her navy pleated skirt and crisp white oxford, and slid on the deep burgundy blazer hanging from the back of her desk chair. She glanced at the mirror.

Her reflection glared back at her, eyeing the stubbornly windblown-looking hair framing her slightly pink face with disapproval. It poofed up at the crown of her head and fell in waves down her back, a few unruly locks curling against her cheeks. She brushed it again to no effect, and finally quit her room with her twice-mended leather school bag slung over her shoulder.

As promised, Mrs Granger, who had volunteered for her day-to-day supervision after her acceptance to her new school, greeted Dahlia at the entrance with a serviette full of buttered toast and a bunch of grapes. She smiled at her charge fondly as she wolfed down the food and drew a silky scarf from her pocket. She expertly tucked her masses of loose, dark curls into a tight bun at the nape of her neck before wrapping the length of fabric about her face and head, obscuring the beautiful tresses. Dahlia settled on the bottom step of the staircase, a bit of toast clenched in her teeth, while she wrestled with the stiff buckles of her school shoes. A moment later, they set off down the driveway together, and within a couple of blocks, the brick façade of the children's home disappeared behind trees and neat little houses.

Dahlia walked quietly at Mrs Granger's side while she polished of the last of her breakfast, and Mrs Granger gave her affectionate looks every so often as she guided the girl from more familiar paths toward a new school. Around them, the buildings grew closer together, their roofs reached higher, and Dahlia noticed more activity on the pavements as the denizens of Crawley went to work or class. Eyes followed them, and the girl stepped closer to her escort to take her hand.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" she asked quietly. "Wearing the hijab?"

Mrs Granger's thickly fringed eyes softened, and she wrapped an arm around the girl's slim shoulders.

"The way people react to it makes me a little uncomfortable, sometimes," she admitted. "But never my choice to wear it. They don't understand, so they fear what they think it might mean."

"Oh."

The scent of sandalwood, cinnamon, and anise surrounding Dahlia lifted a little as Mrs Granger released her shoulders.

"At the same time, a lot of other women and men of my faith misunderstand my reasons for wearing it, too. A lot of people think it's a tool of oppression used to control women," she further explained at the girl's confused expression. "And it is used as such in a lot of places, but no one forces _me_ to wear it. No one ever did, even when we lived in Karachi. I remember my mum arguing with other women over it, actually. I choose to wear it because I feel my modesty is my responsibility. It is not an act of shame, but an act of humbleness. I do not wish physical beauty to factor in how others perceive me. There are many people I've met, I'm sure, who have judged me poorly based on my choice, but I can also say I never got anything academically or in my career because someone thought I looked the part. Or, you know, if some man thought I'd make a nice fixture around the office."

Dahlia blinked and frowned.

"What, like a light fixture?"

"Sort of," Mrs Granger laughed. "Never mind. Do you understand what I mean about the rest?"

"Yes, I think so," she answered, glaring at a man across the street who had given them an ugly look. "How come you don't wear it at the home, then?"

The woman caught her charge's shoulder as they approached a zebra crossing. A few cars passed, and they continued on.

"I was told it didn't fall within the staff and volunteer dress code," she intoned neutrally. "I enjoy my work there too much to leave, though, so I put it on when I leave the building. Anyway, are you looking forward to school?"

Dahlia did not miss the change of subject or Mrs Granger's discomfort. She squeezed her hand lightly as they mounted a short set of steps and emerged onto a square overlooked by a building of concrete, metal, and reflective blue glass. Large, white sans-serif lettering above the wide glass doors proclaimed it _Marie Curie Girls College_. Other children, both older and closer to Dahlia's age, rushed across the square toward the entrance.

"What if no one likes me?" the girl asked in a small voice. "Because I'm younger, or… I don't know."

Mrs Granger let go of her hand to bend and pull her into a tight hug.

"Everyone's different," she assured her, smoothing Dahlia's short hair away from her face. "And you'll already have someone to talk to. My daughter, Hermione, is in the same class as you, if it's the same Mr Carter. I told her to look out for you."

She smiled, and Dahlia frowned.

"I wish we'd met before," she complained. "How is it you've looked after me nearly every day since I turned nine and I've never seen her?"

The woman shrugged.

"I don't know," she laughed a little awkwardly. "I suppose the opportunity never came up. I usually want to hear about you, after all."

Bells rang from the church tower guarding the west side of the square. A bunch of pigeons took off from its old slate roof, and Mrs Granger turned Dahlia to face the school building.

"Go on," she encouraged. "You'll have a lot more fun with cleverer kids. Oh, and Hermione's a lot like me except with her dad's rebellious hair, if you wanted to look for her."

"Thanks Mrs Granger!"

Dahlia grinned over her shoulder at the woman before jogging to catch up with the other rushing children on their way into the building. She slipped among the taller girls easily enough to follow the flow of traffic through the gleaming doors and into a bright, high-ceilinged atrium. A mosaic of blue glass in every shade soared overhead, each angular pane held in place by polished silver metal, and a low, circular fountain occupied the centre of the room. Children navigated around it while a few teachers in neatly pressed clothes watched from the edges. She made eye contact with one such woman, whose expression looked inviting enough for Dahlia to make her way toward her.

"Excuse me," she said once she stood in polite speaking distance. "I'm just starting today, transferring from Madison Primary. I'm supposed to be joining Mr Carter's sixth form class?"

The woman's dark brown eyes crinkled in the corners, and she held out a hand to shake hers.

"Then welcome to Marie Curie's. I'm Jacqueline Blake."

The girl's shoulders relaxed a little at the warm introduction.

"Dahlia Evans," she smiled nervously. "Are you a teacher, Ms Blake?"

"Instructor for advanced physics," the woman grinned. "And applied physics, too, if you count the gymnastics club. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Evans. Let's get you to Donny's class. It wouldn't do for you to be late on your first day."

Ms Blake waved her forward, and Dahlia stepped quickly in the direction she indicated. The teacher guided her down a wing named for someone she did not recognise. They took two lefts and a right, following corridors walled with either windows to the outside or horizontally panelled wood stained in varying warm shades. The further they went from the atrium, the fewer older girls they encountered, until finally, in the _Crowfoot Hodgkin_ wing, Dahlia found herself surrounded by children much closer to her age, if not her height.

She still had a while until she reached her next growth spurt, according to Mrs Granger.

"Here we are," Ms Blake smiled. "CH4. Mr Carter will have a class schedule for you and a map of the school, but if you get lost at any point, ask anyone, especially if she's wearing a silver badge. There should always be a prefect or a staff member around if you need one."

Dahlia looked at the door by which they stopped and smiled back at her guide.

"Thank you," she said sincerely. "I really appreciate your help."

"Anytime, dear. Shall I introduce you, or-?"

The girl's emerald eyes widened, and she felt her stomach clench.

"No, I'm all right," she quickly assured the woman. "Thanks again!"

Ms Blake smiled, waved, and pushed open the frosted glass door. As it closed, Dahlia froze and felt immediately intimidated.

In the last couple of years, she had worked very hard to be one of the best students in her class, if not the best, among children of varying backgrounds. She had attended a public school a couple blocks north of the home. The students there wore uniforms and had his or her own desk, art and educational posters decorated the walls, and a blackboard headed the classrooms, but the similarities ended there.

Floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of the room looked out onto a lovely garden of neatly trimmed rose bushes, stone benches, and towering oaks. Wooden swings hung from sturdy chains wrapped around the biggest boughs. The back wall held tall bookshelves punctuated by low, plush sofas. Several overstuffed poufs lay stacked in one corner. The remaining wall showcased several coat and bag hooks, along with narrow cupboards labelled with neatly printed cards name cards. Above the cupboards hung glass panels etched with literary quotes or painted with authors' portraits. The students, only a dozen or so girls, all dressed in the same crisp, pleated navy skirt, pressed white oxford, striped navy tie, and burgundy jacket, gathered in cliques around shining desks of chrome and frosted glass complete with adjustable footrests, brackets for school bags, drawers, and tilting desktops. Those readying for their day in privacy sat in ergonomic rolling chairs.

Everything screamed wealth, and Dahlia felt suddenly embarrassed of her shabby, second-hand bag, once-white knee socks, and scuffed black shoes. As she stood and gaped, a few girls realized her presence and slowly, the happy chatter cut off only to start up again louder than before. Meanwhile, the dark-haired girl's wide green eyes darted around the room in a panic. She felt sure they knew everything about her turbulent upbringing, knew they had judged her poorly, knew she'd be just as alone here as she had been everywhere before-

"Hello!"

Dahlia blinked and found her poisonous train of thought halted by a brown-eyed girl with cinnamon freckles across her darker cheeks. Lots of bushy, kinky brown curls framed her heart-shaped face.

"You wouldn't be Dahlia Evans, would you?" the girl asked authoritatively. "Because you look quite a lot like I imagined from my mother's description."

She caught her so off guard, Dahlia took a moment longer than usual to process the words.

"Er- Yeah, I am," she said in response to the girl's raised eyebrow. "Hermione Granger?"

The girl she felt fairly sure must be Hermione – she had the same large, piercing eyes and full mouth as her mother's – threw her arms about Dahlia's with a wide grin.

"Yes! I'm so happy to finally meet you. Mum's told me everything about you," she gushed while leading her captive to a desk at the front of the room. "Sit by me?"

A couple snickers caught Dahlia's ear, and she glanced over Hermione's shoulder. A few girls looked away quickly. Hermione blushed, and her smile dipped a little in the corners.

"Thanks," she finally answered, sliding into one of the rolling seats. "I was a little worried since-"

The girl lifted a shoulder eloquently and Hermione made a sympathetic sound in the back of her throat.

"I don't care about any of that," she said matter-of-factly. "Are you still reading _Two Towers_?"

Dahlia blinked and smiled shyly.

"Did Mrs Granger tell you I was reading that?"

"Oh, I told her to give you mine since she said the home didn't have a copy and your next library day wasn't until next month."

Warmth crept over Dahlia's cheeks.

"Thank you," she mumbled. "I didn't know it was yours. Do you want it back?"

Hermione frowned in apparent confusion.

"Why would I want that? It was a present."

"Oh," the other girl looked at her desktop. "Well, thank you. I hadn't known."

"So..?" Hermione prompted again.

"What?" Dahlia blushed at her classmate's expectant expression. "Er- Right. No, I finished it a couple of nights ago, but I was going to read through it again."

The bell rang, interrupting the other girl's reply, and a short, balding teacher walked through the door. The girls standing about quickly took their seats and adjusted their desktops, and Dahlia, taking her cue from her neighbour, pulled a notebook and a biro from her bag.

"Good morning, class," the man greeted them jovially.

Sporadic voices answered him, but the teacher did not seem to mind. He slid off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves in quick movements Dahlia thought looked like habit. Mr Carter flipped a book open in the centre of his desk and took up a piece of chalk.

"Right, so anyone want to summarise Friday's class?" he looked around blandly before nodding to Hermione, who vibrated in her seat.

"We had just finished discussing act two, scene two of MacBeth," she enunciated clearly. "In which Lady MacBeth and her husband discuss the growing weight of morality in relation to their plot. Lady MacBeth displays her callous disregard of life by stating 'A little water clears us of this deed,' and MacBeth admits to mounting paranoia and fear due to his actions."

She sat primly, and Dahlia smiled at her. One row over, a girl with a blonde ponytail mimed gagging. The girl beside her rolled her eyes.

The freckles dusting Hermione's cheeks disappeared under a deep flush.

The teacher sighed in a resigned sort of way,

"Thank you, Granger. O'Donnell, if you would?"

Dahlia followed along in Hermione's textbook and set to watching her new classmates whenever the teacher stopped their recitation to lecture on one point or another. She took notes, allowing the words to wash over her without registering in her mind except to make it to the paper.

People didn't like Hermione, she observed, and her, by extension. When the teacher turned to write on the slate board, she saw them whisper behind their hands or pass notes, and she recognized a mean glint in more than one pair of eyes. Still, no one said anything overtly, and the pair of misfits got through the remainder of class without incident.

"Fifteen minutes to revise and organize your notes," Mr Carter finally said after they finished Act II. "Miss Evans?"

Dahlia stood up so quickly at the sound of her name that her sock got stuck on the edge of a bolt and nearly tripped her.

"Yes, sir?" she asked once she managed to extricate herself and make her way to the teacher's desk.

"Did you have any questions about what we covered today? I received the essay you wrote covering Act I, but I wanted to make sure you were up to speed," he said, wiping his chalk-covered palms with a handkerchief.

"No, sir," she said quickly. "I've read MacBeth, before. Shakespeare's one of the authors the other kids don't want to read, so I've gone through the entire anthology already."

"Ah, at the children's home?" he hummed, smiling. "I'm surprised they have a full set of the classics."

The student's shoulders tensed at mention of her housing situation, and the sudden hush of chatter behind her confirmed her fear. She felt her cheeks redden.

"We have lots of generous donors," she said quietly. "Er- I met Ms Blake on my way in. She said you'd have some things for me?"

Recognition lit the teacher's face, and he smiled.

"Yes! Nearly forgot," he laughed. "You'll find your texts for all your classes in your assigned locker. You'll come here every morning. We do literature on odd days and grammar and composition on even days. Your other classes will alternate similarly, but you'll change rooms for those."

The teacher opened a drawer and flipped through a few files for a moment before withdrawing a slip of paper.

"Here you are. Courses with respective booklists on the front, map on the back."

"Thank you, sir," Dahlia said gratefully. "If we store our things here, is there any specific time we should come back to get them for lunch, or if we need to change books?"

"The room will be open to you before and after lunch, but other than that, you're expected to keep what you need in your bag," he explained. "Anything else?"

"No sir," the girl smiled.

"Excellent. Then welcome to Marie Curie's."


	4. Different

Disclaimer: Do not own, blah blah blah, I make no money, etc.

A/N: Lots is going to happen here to set the stage, but we'll be picking up the pace soon as we get into the action leading up to the girls leaving for Hogwarts.

 **I need your opinion:** I have written up through chapter 7 in a burst of manic, up-all-night writing sprees I didn't have the self control to stop. My sleep schedule is horribly skewed, but I've learned to just roll with it when I have a creative burst, so no particular regrets, there. I'm kind of leaning toward holding off on posting more content to give me some breathing room from the guilt-beast when my day job inevitably drains me again of any creative inclination; however, I might be persuaded to change my mind if you would like to see me post sooner. Thoughts?

* * *

Chapter Four: Different

* * *

Dahlia quickly decided she loved Marie Curie Girls College. She was almost never bored in class. She adored most of her teachers, and no one made fun of her for reading so much. Though they found other things to disparage, the quality of her instruction and Hermione's company more than made up for other girls' ugly looks and whispers to the point Dahlia stopped noticing them. More than anything else, though, she loved having a friend.

Hermione, it turned out, shared Dahlia's time table in every subject save their electives. While the former took additional maths courses - Dahlia shuddered at the thought - she discovered a knack for languages and progressed quickly enough to climb her way to the top of her class. They went everywhere together, sharing lunches and study hours, and after school, the girls walked with Mrs Granger to the corner of the block, where Hermione would go south toward her house and her mother, chaperoning Dahlia, would return to the children's home.

November passed in a blur, and with December came a worry Dahlia had never encountered before.

"What do you want for Christmas?"

Dahlia's head whipped around at the sound of the question, voiced by one of the girls who didn't like her to another of her clique.

While the blondes engaged in an obnoxiously loud exchange about their wish lists and upcoming holidays, Dahlia felt her stomach knot. Hermione's mum practiced Islam, but her dad went to church most Sundays, and their family celebrated Christmas with Mr Granger's parents. Usually, the kids at the home would exchange homemade ornaments or crafts, and Dahlia made cards for Mrs Granger and the Doctors Burbage, who always sent her a gift despite giving her up. Hermione, though, deserved more in Dahlia's estimation.

She glanced over at her friend, who sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and an enormous book on cryptology obscuring her face. Even in her relaxed position, everything about her screamed _wealth_.

Unlike the other girls, Hermione Granger never flaunted her family's privileged socioeconomic status, but Dahlia paid attention. Her bag had a designer label, her clothes were always perfectly pressed, she never had split ends, and her tidy, buffed nails always gleamed with clear gloss from regular manicures. She wore a dainty gold and sapphire ring on the middle finger of her right and and a slim gold bangle on her left wrist. Although they weren't patent like other girls', her finely made leather school shoes always shone from a recent polish, and fine stitching sewed its uppers to a low-heeled sole.

Dahlia doubted she'd ever received a handmade gift in her life.

Hermione went on reading her book, completely incognizant of the roiling panic and tinge of shame running through her friend's head. The shorter girl remained unusually quiet for the remainder of the day despite Hermione's gentle probing, and by the time they parted to go their separate ways home, Dahlia had worked herself into a glum mood.

"What's the matter?" Mrs Granger asked gently after her charge failed to converse beyond few short grunts.

"I haven't much money. At least, not enough to buy presents, even if Ms Nielsen authorised a shopping trip," she admitted, flushing scarlet. "I finally have a friend and I can't get her a present."

The woman blinked and caught Dahlia's shoulder to stop her. The girl turned around, hands in her pockets and shoulders slumped, and shuffled aside as a few students passed them on the narrow pavement.

"Is that what all this is about?" Mrs Granger frowned. "Darling, I'm going to tell you something I'd very much like you to remember."

Dahlia looked up, curiosity piqued.

"Hermione's never been happier than she has with you as a friend," she said firmly. "That's more of a gift than her father or I could ever give her. It's not something money could buy. Before she met you, my little girl's only company were those books of hers, and I think you know more than most what that's like."

Dahlia's eyes widened, then saddened again as she bit her lower lip.

"But I _want_ to get her something."

Mrs Granger pursed her lips as she took her charge's hand to continue on.

"Why don't we bake some biscuits?" she suggested after a few moments. "Hermione loves chocolate chip."

"I thought you were anti-sweets on principle," Dahlia said a little cheekily. "What with being a dentist and everything."

"That's not untrue," Mrs Granger laughed. "But you're not a dentist, and Hermione's just like any other eleven-year-old when it comes to real sweets. She's only allowed to have them on holidays, so we may as well let her gorge herself silly on them before it's back to fruit, veggies, and banana-based baked goods."

Dahlia made a face, and her minder poked her in the ribs. The girl squealed and giggled as she skipped ahead to the crossing. She twirled and grinned while Mrs Granger jogged to catch up, then turned again to run ahead. Her navy blue, hand-knitted scarf swung with her momentum. Her breath fogged her glasses a little. Her nose stung slightly. She looked back to check the woman's progress, and felt the warm relief in her chest evaporate along with her exhalation.

Mrs Granger grinned at her, halfway through the intersection. Rubber screeched on the icy asphalt. The lorry driver's face shone pale and afraid through his scummy windscreen. Dahlia felt her pulse in her ears, and her skin flashed hot and cold. The smell of ozone filled her nose. A scream built in her throat as that terrible, crackling sensation made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

She tried to fight it back and stepped off the pavement, arms stretched toward Hermione's mother. The woman's face had gone from amused to surprised in a moment, and horror overtook her features as Dahlia stepped into the street.

"NO!"

 _CRACK!_

The lorry careened through the light and spun, tipping onto its side and skidding into the car parked on the other side of the residential street.

The girl heard the sickening crunch of metal and glass, and her chest ached as she tried, desperately to hold herself together even as she registered the feel of wool under her fingers. The antiseptic taste clung to her tongue. She felt someone's arms around her, but it took a long time for her to crack open her eyes to see who.

"...Liah!"

The voice echoed strangely, like it came through water.

"Dahlia!"

Her eyes focused on Mrs Granger's face, and she felt herself let out a relieved sob.

"Dahlia, love," the woman cried, running one hand over the girl's unruly locks. "It's O.K. sweetie, I'm fine. You're fine."

And then the realization of what happened set in. Dahlia's shoulders trembled and her face took on a slightly gray tinge above her navy scarf. Panic coursed through her veins. The humming returned to her ears.

She'd seen.

Mrs Granger had seen and she'd be afraid of her, now. She'd tell the home she didn't want to volunteer anymore, and Hermione-

 _Hermione_.

The thought of her only friend made her chest ache. She felt tears sting her eyes.

 _We were going to bake biscuits_ , she thought miserably. _She's seen and now she'll leave, like everyone had._

A siren went off a few blocks away, and people up and down the road opened their doors to investigate the clamour. Dahlia felt their eyes zero in on her and saw accusation in their stares.

"Shh," Mrs Granger soothed.

Dahlia focused on her face, and the arms wrapped around her tightened briefly.

"Sweetheart, listen to me."

 _Why is she still hugging me?_ the girl thought incredulously.

"We're both fine, but we need to go, now, love. Come on."

She let the mother tuck her tightly against her side, and while neighbours and paramedics swarmed the intersection, the two huddled figures quietly fled. Little by little, Dahlia felt the electric tingle retreat from her limbs.

Her head hurt and her thoughts spun too quickly for her to pay much attention aside from keeping her feet moving, but with every moment Mrs Granger held onto her, the more she felt herself hope she had imagined that instance of horrible power. When the roar faded from her ears, she tried to take stock of her surroundings.

Mrs Granger pulled her away from the main street and onto a narrower cobblestone lane. Trees interrupted the houses more often, and the buildings themselves looked less uniform, though most seemed to fall within Tudor architecture. When the noise of the sirens faded behind them, the woman fished a black mobile from an interior coat pocket.

"Hello? Ms Nielsen?" Mrs Granger said with a forced smile. "Yes, this is Safiya Granger. No, nothing's wrong. I just wondered whether I could take her home for the weekend. Would you mind?"

A small pause followed, and Dahlia heard a muffled buzz from the phone.

"No, that's quite all right. Hermione's got plenty of extra pyjamas and clothes," Mrs Granger casually dismissed. "You see, Dahlia was a bit upset by the children at school, so I'd like to spend some quality time with her. You're already so busy and I don't mind-"

Another pause.

"Of course. I'll fax back the form as soon as I get in. Thank you, Ms Nielsen. Happy Christmas. Yes - Goodbye."

"You aren't afraid of me?" Dahlia whispered tremulously the moment Mrs Granger returned the phone to her pocket.

Mrs Granger's features pulled into a small frown, and she shook her head.

"I'm a surgeon - a scientist, but if I believe in Allah, then I must also believe there's more to this world than what we can observe day-to-day," she said firmly, squeezing Dahlia's hand tighter. "You haven't done anything wrong, and everything's going to be just fine. Let's get inside, and we can talk some more."

The child swallowed nervously and tried not to focus too hard on the fluttery anxiety gripping her chest.

Mrs Granger led her up a narrow path to an old, brick house with mossy roof tiles and a rich blue door. Frosted winter-browned vines clung to trellises bordering each window facing the street, and the lawn stretched to walls of trees on either side. The woman took a moment to unlock the front door, then gently urged her charge inside. Dahlia stepped over the threshold onto a plush runner.

"Shoes off, please," Mrs Granger said softly, opening a closet to reveal several low, narrow shelves filled with footwear and a line of neatly hung coats.

Dahlia toed off her school shoes without bothering to undo the buckles, then unwound her scarf and handed it and her wool jacket to the woman at her pointed look. She stood awkwardly in the entry afterward, unsure of what to do with herself while her hostess hung up her own things and unwound her burgundy hijab.

"Hermione, darling!" she called once she'd neatly halved and folded the fabric over another hanger. "Come down, please. I have Dahlia, here, and we need to have a talk."

"Dahlia's here?"

The girl in question smiled tremulously at the curiosity and excitement in her friend's tone and laughed as the taller girl came into view at the top of the stairs. Her hair, which had been piled atop her head in a poofy, frizzy bun sparkled with multicoloured glitter.

"What were you doing?" Dahlia asked with muted mirth. "You've got craft room droppings all over."

Hermione rolled her eyes and pulled the elastic from her hair. It immediately fell around her face in riotous curls, and Mrs Granger sighed affectionately at the disarray.

"Would you please go get your new favourite book from your trunk, love?" she suggested with an odd inflection to the words.

Hermione's mouth fell open, and she blinked rapidly.

"Um…" she frowned, and her nose wrinkled a little in her befuddlement. "You mean the one about the castle?"

Mrs Granger's gaze slid meaningfully to Dahlia, and Hermione's face lit up with unbridled excitement before she bounded back up the stairs. Her mother smiled in a strained sort of way and gently guided her guest to a cosy sitting room.

Dahlia looked around appreciatively as she settled on an overstuffed, velvet damask loveseat. Photos of Hermione at different ages, alone and with family members Dahlia only partly recognized, smiled at her from frames on every flat surface. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase took up one wall, and yet more stacks of paperbacks and hardcovers cluttered the floor under side tables and beside seats. A small fireplace hung with three hand-knitted stockings occupied the centre of another wall, above which hung a large family portrait of Hermione, her parents, and an elderly couple Dahlia assumed to be her grandparents. Brightly coloured parcels spilled out from beneath the gleaming boughs of a Christmas tree in the corner between the wall of windows and the hearth.

Mrs Granger quietly watched the girl's slow, longing assessment of the room from her seat on the ottoman opposite and did not break the brief silence until Hermione returned with a thick, leather-bound tome clutched to her chest. At her mother's gesture, she hopped onto the loveseat beside her friend, but didn't loosen her hold on the book enough for Dahlia to read the title.

"All right," Mrs Granger smiled nervously. "First, love, I want you to know you're safe here. We're not going to make you do anything you don't want to do, and we won't tell anyone about what happened today-"

"I didn't mean to!" the girl quickly interjected. "I just saw the lorry coming, and I couldn't let it-"

"Someone almost ran you over?!" Hermione squeaked, face whipping about to stare at her mother accusingly.

"And Dahlia saved me," Mrs Granger enunciated carefully. "Which is why we're going to have a nice, long chat."

The woman caught Dahlia's small hands in hers and carefully examined her face. The girl watched her dark, finely shaped brows pull together as she ordered her words. Her stomach twisted unpleasantly, but she forced herself to keep Mrs Granger's warm gaze.

"The universe works in a lot of mysterious ways," she began again. "And the people in it are just as much of a mystery. There are extraordinary people - people like Einstein, Alan Turing, Marie Curie - whose minds have changed our reality forever. There are average people, like the many who were too stupid to keep you, and there are cleverer people like Dan."

"And you, Mum," Hermione interrupted.

Mrs Granger rolled her eyes and smiled.

"And then there are very special people, people who can do things no one else could even dream of. People who can use _magic_."

Dahlia felt a tingle roll down her spine, and the horrible thoughts of fear and shame spinning through her brain came to an abrupt halt as Hermione turned the book in her hands.

At first, it might have been mistaken for a normal children's book. A painted rendering of a beautiful castle dominated the hard cover. It stood atop a cliff overlooking a mirror-like lake and surrounded by rolling lawns of deep green. The bottom of the image held a shadowed forest, in which Dahlia barely made out a few silvery-white unicorns peeking between the trees.

As she watched, astounded, ripples raced across the lake and a shimmering tentacle waved at her. The clouds at the top edge of the book parted to reveal embossed gold lettering spelling _Hogwarts: a History._

"It moves!" she gasped, leaning closer. "How can it move?"

"Magic," Hermione said matter-of-factly, and Dahlia met her expectant gaze.

"So… So the things I can do, that's magic?"

"I think so," Mrs Granger gently confirmed.

The small, dark-haired girl leaned back into the sofa and made a sound halfway between a sigh and a whimper.

"I've read it through a dozen times," her friend smiled, indicating her book. "It tells you everything about Hogwarts since its founding in 990 AD, and it has course overviews and professors' biographies in the back. I'll be going in September, and if you're a witch, too - that's their feminine word for magic-users - you'll get your invitation this summer, so we'll be in the same class!"

 _A witch,_ Dahlia repeated in her mind. _I'm a witch._

A sharp, screechy ring echoed in the kitchen, and everyone jumped.

"That's probably Mrs Nielsen's fax," Mrs Granger said, her shoulders relaxing. "I'll only be a moment."

She rose gracefully, leaving Dahlia and Hermione together on the loveseat. The girls sat quietly for a moment, listening to the sound of the fax machine slowly printing its message and Mrs Granger rummaging for a pen.

"Oh, this is so wonderful!" Hermione finally exclaimed, throwing her arms around her friend's middle. "It's going to be so much better now that we're going together!"

"I'm a little shell-shocked, I think," Dahlia managed, gingerly returning the enthusiastic hug. "It's nice to know I'm not possessed or a mutant or something, but it's still a lot to think about. I mean, really, magic?"

"Well, technically we're probably mutants in that we have a natural mutation from the norm - that was Mum's guess once she saw the figures for the last the world wizarding census-" she rattled off, launching immediately into lecture mode. "She said there's been a slow but steady increase in so-called Muggleborn - that's what they call magicals born to non-magical parents - since the earliest records she could find. But no, we're not X-Men or something."

Hermione giggled at her friend's tentative smile.

"It's all right. if you need to think about that a bit," she assured her. "But the important question is, would you like to be my sister?"

Dahlia blinked.

"What?"

"Hermione!" Mrs Granger scolded from the other room. "I hadn't told her, yet!"

"Oh, sorry," she blushed. "Mum's been telling me about you since she started working at the orphanage, and I told her we should adopt you ages ago, but she said we couldn't because she and dad were scared to let anyone know about my magic. We also thought it might be a bit hard for you what with me going to Hogwarts in the fall and you staying here. You're really a witch, though, so now we can. Right, Mum?"

"Yes," she laughed, stepping around the corner to meet their eyes. "Now, we can. If that's what you want, Dahlia, dear. You know we love you, and Dan's wanted a sister or brother for Hermione for ages."

"Sister?" Dahlia repeated. "You and Mr Granger want me to be your daughter?"

A broad smile cracked across the woman's face and crinkled the corners of her almond-shaped eyes.

"Yes, love. For a while, now."

Dahlia's throat burned and her eyes stung, but she valiantly blinked away the threatening tears.

"Yes, please."

"Brilliant!" Hermione crowed.

"Come on, we have to start setting up your room!"

She grabbed Dahlia's hand and pulled her up the stairs.

Safiya watched from the study doorway and sniffled a little at the sight. She rubbed away the moisture clinging to her lashes, returned to her desk, and bent to finish filling out the temporary foster housing form. Every so often, she looked up at the thick manila envelope wedged into their overflowing letter sorter and couldn't help grinning at the tidy print on the label stuck across its top left corner.

 _Adoption Application - Dahlia A. Evans_

* * *

The next week passed in a whirlwind. Dan Granger arrived home the evening of Dahlia's arrival to find his daughter and her best friend in the second bedroom, sprawled across the floor with a dozen glossy catalogues and home décor magazines spread around them.

"Daddy!" Hermione had cried. "We're _finally_ adopting Dahli!"

"Brilliant," he'd grinned. "Your mum told me. So what're you doing?"

"Helping pick out bedclothes and decorations," she quipped. "Daddy, please tell Dahlia she doesn't have to pick the least expensive things."

"As long as it's not unreasonable as Hermione would define it, please pick what you like, love," he assured the nervous girl. "We're going to spoil you quite rotten."

When they finished, the girls (at Hermione's insistence) had gone through an entire pad of post-it notes and given her father four heavily-bookmarked issues while her dumbfounded shadow dreamily followed her friend in a whirlwind of settling-in activities.

The Grangers incorporated their newest member into the family's daily life with such enthusiasm Dahlia often found herself double-checking to see if it was all an elaborate dream. Safiya and Dan submitted the temporary fostership documents and received approval to begin the adoption process without the slightest hitch. Shopping occupied several of the girls' days as they augmented Dahlia's limited wardrobe and converted the former guest bedroom into a personalized space.

Dan and Safiya put their new charge in Hermione's room, emptied Dahlia's of furniture, and set about painting it in the color scheme she picked with her best friend's help. The kids helped tear down the old floral paper for three of the walls, leaving one for an accent behind Dahlia's bed. They painted the others pale blue-grey before moving the rug and furniture back in.

The green-eyed girl lay awake for a long the first night she slept in her new room, amazed at the softness of the sheets under her fingers and the fluffiness of the duvet. By day, she familiarised herself with her new home, watched telly with her best friend-cum-sister, and started to feel less of a guest with every passing moment.

Then, there was _magic_.

Hermione threw open her closet one afternoon to lug out a heavy, oldfashioned, leather-covered trunk. She tugged it to the middle of the rug at the foot of her bed and waved for Dahlia to sit by her as she traced her fingertips over the embossed coat of arms stamped on its lid.

"This is the one the wizard at McKinley and Parker's Portmanteaus recommended when we went to buy my school things," she explained, clicking open the clasps. "But he had others you might like better."

Inside lay a row of neatly arranged books whose titles made her heart flutter with excitement. Beside them sat a squat pewter cauldron in which nested a boxed set of phials and beakers. Carefully folded robes occupied another corner, and on top, in the very middle, rest a narrow cardboard box stamped with _Ollivanders_ , and below _, Fine Makers of Wands since 382 BC._

"Is that-?"

Hermione opened the box carefully and picked up the slender, pale rod inside. Scrolling vines ran up and down its shaft - _English ivy_ , Dahlia thought.

" _Wingardium leviosa,"_ Hermione whispered, flicking the wand precisely.

A book on her nightstand floated into the air and hovered for a moment before dropping to the tabletop with a _smack_.

"I'm still working on that one," she said with disappointment. "But I figured out portable bluebell flames! Hold out your hands, and don't drop it!"

She made Dahlia cup her hands and cast:

" _Lacarnum inflamarae!"_

Dahlia nearly jerked away, and only Hermione's grip on her hand kept her from the instinctive reaction. Belatedly, she realized the bright, blue flames didn't produce enough heat to feel like a proper fire. They felt very warm, but not uncomfortably so.

"They don't need fuel," the bushy-haired girl explained. "But they'll use it if it touches something flammable for too long. It's supposed to be a charm they invented for safe, indoor heating."

"Brilliant," her friend whispered, staring wide-eyed at the bluebell flames. "Can you show me?"

"I thought you might want to."

She muttered something Dahlia couldn't quite make out, and the little fire disappeared without so much as a puff of smoke. She passed the wand, and Dahlia marvelled at the warm tingle suffusing her fingers.

"Wow," she breathed. "What's the first one you got to work?"

"Torchlight charm," Hermione said immediately. "The incantation's ' _lumos_ ,' with special accent on the 'u.' There's no wand movement, but you need to concentrate. The book says not to force it, or you could light the wand on fire."

"Oh, good," her student laughed nervously. "I'll do that. Er-"

She adjusted her grip on the wand and took a deep breath.

" _Lumos!"_

Nothing happened.

The girl tried very hard not to feel too disappointed.

"That's all right," Hermione shrugged. "It took me a while, and Mr Ollivander - that's the best wandmaker in Britain, according to _Wands and Wizardry: Foci in Britain and Europe -_ says every wand's different, and you'll always get the best performance with a wand that chooses you. Just concentrate on making it light up like a torch, then say it."

Dahlia nodded, gripped the vinewood wand with both hands, closed her eyes, and cast.

" _Lumos!"_

"You did it!" her friend squealed. "Oh my gosh, it took me _ages_ to get that right!"

"Wow," the green-eyed girl whispered.

She stared in amazement at the soft yellow glow.

"Can we do another?"

Hermione's answering grin nearly blinded in its intensity. The girls bent their heads together over the book, and remained that way until Mrs Granger called them to dinner.

Finally, Christmas morning dawned bright and cold.

"Dahlia!"

The ten-year-old groaned and rolled over, pulling the coverlet over her head against the sudden brightness in the room and the uncommonly loud alarm. Someone jumped on the bed, barely missing her legs, and shook her excitedly until she finally admitted it would not go away on its own.

"Hermione," she complained, slipping her glasses on with a grumble. "It's six in the morning."

"It's Christmas!" the taller girl squealed.

Normally, Christmas wasn't very exciting at the children's home. There were always mincemeat pies and several fat, roasted chickens, but there wasn't all that much to do on Christmas day unless a donor arranged some sort of entertainment or excursion. Dahlia couldn't help smiling at her contagious cheer and acquiesced to the demanding girl. She slid from beneath the warmth of her blanket, shoved her feet into the cool, fuzzy bunny slippers Hermione insisted were too cute to resist and Dahlia secretly liked, pulled on a woolly dressing gown, and went downstairs with only a few grumbling complaints.

"Morning," Dan yawned from the kitchen as they passed on the way to the sitting room. "I see you've been treated to Hermione's favourite Christmas tradition."

He gave Dahlia a brief hug and kissed the bushy-haired, impatient child on the head.

"Go on. I'm making cocoa right now, so you can go sort the presents."

Mentally, Dahlia had accepted the idea of a Christmas with proper gifts, an actual fireplace, and family activities, but she was not prepared for the splendour greeting her that morning.

"Woah," she breathed.

Overnight, the already festive room had exploded. In addition to the wrapped gifts, at least a dozen new ones peeked from beneath the boughs of the tree. Gold tinsel draped the windows and book cases. Sweets tins shone from every tabletop, and fat, red velvet pillows spilled over the sofa, armchair, and plush rug.

"What happened?"

"Santa always drops an extra festive Christmas bomb when he comes," Hermione explained with a touch of exasperation. "Mum and Dad _insist_ it's all his fault."

"Of course," Safiya smiled, walking in with a wide tray of steaming hot cocoa. "It has absolutely nothing to do with Grandmum's weird obsession with shiny things and Dad's inability to say 'no' to anything she says."

"Oi!"

The girls laughed at the man's indignant expression.

"You know you love me," he winked at Safiya as he took a seat.

"You know I do," she smiled and stood on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips.

Hermione rolled her eyes at her father's besotted expression. Dahlia wistfully watched them curl together on the sofa through the curtain of her dark hair while Hermione began passing around wrapped gifts. To her amazement, a pile of gifts equal to her family members' respective hoards lay before her.

"Youngest always goes first in this house, dear," Safiya said as their eyes turned to her. "Go on. I think that one on top's from Dan."

The girl nodded and pushed her glassed up the bridge of her nose before tearing into the lovely red wrapping paper. As she revealed the sleek packaging underneath, she felt her throat constricting.

Not everyone at the orphanage knew anything about their birth parents. Most who did generally didn't broadcast that knowledge (having been taken from bad environments, in the first place), and the remainder often shut out those memories if they had gotten to know their mothers and fathers, at all.

Dahlia, though, only knew of one other kid at St. Anthony's whose birth parents had died, and like him, she only had a precious few things to connect with them. For her, there had been enough to fill one quilted diaper bag, aside from the normal baby things: a broken Pink Floyd cassette, a driver's license, her own medical and personal records, three hand-stitched plush animals, and an odd golden metal sphere the size of a golf ball. These, along with a yellowed newspaper clipping about Lily Evans' car crash, resided in a box hidden beneath her bed.

But now, she held a gift she had never thought to ask for: a glossy CD of _Wish You Were Here_ cello-taped to a brand new Sony Discman.

No one said anything as her hair fell around her face like a curtain, and she took several deep breaths before she could look up again, but her new family seemed to know how she might be feeling and quietly waited until she stood and tentatively hugged Mr Granger, who had been the only person she'd spoken to about music in any capacity after seeing his extensive vinyl collection dominating an entire wall of the study. He looped his long arms around her gently and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"Thank you," she mumbled lamely. "I've always wanted a music player."

"Thank you," he countered. "I always wanted another daughter who shared my taste in music."

She heard Hermione sniffling behind her, and Safiya's eyes looked suspiciously moist, so Dahlia quickly retreated to her loot and Dan, ever the one to put a room at ease, cleared his throat.

"'Mione?" he smiled when the little witch pouted predictably.

She _hated_ nicknames. Still, she was tactful enough to ignore her annoyance to brightly announce her first gift was from Grandmum and Grandad. She sighed appreciatively as she unwrapped the first of what was sure to be many books, judging by the shape of her parcels. Dan and Safiya went next, then Dahlia struggled again to contain her joy with each thoughtful present.

Hermione had, in fact, made something for her by hand before her parents started the adoption process. Dahlia eyed the carefully organized, colour-coded diary with equal mounts exasperation and affection.

Though her handwriting leaned toward the messy side when she rushed, the ten-year-old knew herself to be a far better note-taker than at least ninety percent of her age group. She consistently turned in her work and earned exceptional marks. Hermione, however, made studying into a precise, sometimes manic, ritual. At some point, though, she must have seen Dahlia doodling concepts and took it upon herself to digitally create and neatly assemble pages perfect for such a technique. She also included a calendar, homework planner, and conversion tables.

"You are absolutely mental," Dahlia laughed, throwing her arms around her unabashed friend. "I love it. Thanks."

In addition, the bushy-haired bibliophile also bought her the first five volumes of a Japanese graphic novel featuring five crime-fighting girls with magical superpowers. Dahlia had been immediately enamored of the first volume she picked up and spent the majority of that particular book shop visit rapidly reading the right-to-left pages while blindly following the sound of Hermione's footsteps through the nonfiction section. Dahlia, however, got something neither of her parents would have thought of for their bookish daughter.

Hermione gasped as she opened a small, white pasteboard box and carefully extracted a delicate gold chain strung with one minute, tear-drop sapphire. It had taken all of the pocket money Dahlia diligently saved over the past several years in addition to a hefty portion of her gift-giving allowance Dan and Safiya provided, but she had wanted it badly.

"It's just like the one in the store window!" she exclaimed, referencing a tiny boutique the passed on their walk to and from school. "How did you know?"

Dahlia shrugged.

"You always glance at it, and you _never_ look at storefronts more than once unless they have books in them."

Hermione nearly squeezed the life out of her and pressed a kiss to her cheek, making the younger girl blush at the enthusiastic thank-you. Physical affection was an aspect of the Granger home she was still getting used to. She'd become accustomed to Safiya's gentle hand on her shoulder or clasped around her fingers, but the Grangers overflowed with hugs, kisses, and playful poking and tickling.

She also gifted her best friend a felt-lined trinket box fashioned from a cleaned breath mint tin and altered with modelling clay, paint, scraps of fabric, and leather to mimic her Hogwarts trunk, down to tiny brassy buckles and stamped crest.

"So you've got somewhere to put your necklace and ring and stuff when we go next September," Dahlia reasoned.

When all the parcels lay bare, their wrappings thoroughly mauled and spread about the sitting room like oversized confetti, the family settled in for cheesey Christmas programming on the telly, hot cocoa, and spent the day snacking on platters of cheese, mince pies, dolmades, falafel, and delicate curry puffs along with buttery flatbread and homemade biscuits.

In the ten-year-old's mind, it was the picture of a perfect family Christmas, so when the cheery musical special lighting the television cut to an emergency notice rather than the usual adverts, it caught everyone's attention.

" _We apologize for the break in today's normal programming. The police request residents of Crawley and the surrounding area please remain indoors and off the streets while they conduct a man-hunt for an armed and extremely dangerous person of interest suspected in the kidnapping and brutal murder of a twelve-year-old girl only hours ago. Out of respect to the victim's family, her name has not been released._

 _Police responded when the child's family returned home from visiting relatives in hospital to find an unknown person depositing her remains in the girl's bedroom. Police currently believe the crime was committed elsewhere before returning the body to the premises, as evidence suggests the child was forcibly removed from her home prior to sustaining any obvious injuries. From the family's initial statements, police believe the suspect left the area on foot-"_

A sketch of a man with wild, dark hair, high cheekbones, and piercing, deep-set eyes flashed across the screen. A scrolling caption listed his reported attributes, below:

 _Approximately 6ft tall, trim physique, approximately 90 kg, dark hair, light eyes, light skin, red scar or birthmark over left cheek -_

Safiya unconsciously pulled the girls to her sides, and Dahlia curled against her warmth. Even just as an artist's sketch, the man managed to look menacing.

" _Investigators say the suspect may also be involved in a similar unsolved case opened several weeks ago, in which Mrs Donnelly of London found her 11-year-old son dead in his bedroom upon returning from the supermarket. Today's victim, police say, mirrors the injuries found in the former case. We repeat: Residents of Crawley and the surrounding area are asked to please remain indoors and off the streets, if possible. Police are searching for an unknown person of interest in the kidnapping and violent murder of a twelve-year-old girl. Authorities are treating the suspect as armed and highly dangerous. All citizens are asked to please phone this special hotline to report any suspicious activity."_

"Well, that's just lovely," Dan grumbled darkly.

"Who could do something like that?" Hermione whispered, eyebrows drawn together in indignant anger. "That's just- Just awful. _It's Christmas._ "

Mr and Mrs Granger exchanged a long, somewhat sad look and Safiya took the girl's hand in her own.

"Not everyone's good, darling," she said sadly. "And there's varying degrees of bad. Make no mistake, humans are very capable of horrible things. This, and worse. It's up to the good-"

She smiled gently at both girls.

"Up to people like you, to be kind and just, and do what you can to protect yourself and help others when you're given the opportunity."

Dahlia didn't say anything. She knew very well how horrible people could be. Hers was not the most traumatic story housed in the children's home.

"Well," Dan said, shutting off the telly and glancing at the front door to ensure the bolt remained locked. "Why don't we all settle in upstairs and play some poker?"

The slightly worried expression marring Hermione's features vanished in a flash, and she sent Dahlia a shark-like grin.

"Let's go get the buttons!"

"Buttons?" the black-haired girl repeated confusedly.

Hermione ignored the implied question and kept on pulling her up the stairs. Their parents lagged behind, blowing out candles and turning off the gas fire, before taking one another's hands and following the children.

"Take turns driving them in, from now on?" Dan asked in an undertone, pausing in the open door of their bedroom.

The girls lay on their stomachs, sprawled across the enormous master bed with a tray perched between them, stacked with multicoloured buttons while Hermione explained the basic rules.

"Yes," Safiya nodded. "I'm going to switch my schedule to weekends at the home, too."

"They're fine," her husband reassured her, gently wrapping a long arm around her and pressing a kiss to her crown.

"I know," she sighed. "I just can't stand the thought-"

The mother took a gulp of air.

"We've just lost too many before they could even-" she choked on the words, her hand unconsciously going to her abdomen."I can't bear the thought of anything happening to them."

"I know, love," Dan soothed, rubbing a warm hand up and down her arm. "We'll keep them safe. Nothing'll happen."


	5. Paired

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

A/N: Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Until I run out of written material, you can expect a new chapter every week.

I really appreciate hearing what y'all think, so please take a minute to review, if you've gone one to spare.

* * *

Chapter Five: Paired

* * *

Despite the family's best efforts, Mrs Granger rapidly became a bundle of nerves with each passing day the news failed to offer positive updates in the case of the murdered kids. She and Dan drove the children to and from school, and Safiya alternated between watching her girls like a hawk and worrying herself into near-panic.

"Mummy lost two babies before she had me," Hermione explained one afternoon when Dahlia finally asked after the woman's extreme reaction. "They never made it to term, and then when I was seven, I had a little brother for a week, but he was born too early and couldn't make it."

Dahlia pondered this for a few moments, feeling worse and worse for her adoptive mother. She sighed, flipped the page of their charms textbook, and paused when the words on the page registered.

"Hermione," she said so loudly the girl jumped. "We can learn defense!"

Her sister frowned and chewed her lower lip, an expression Dahlia mentally called her 'thinking face.'

"I don't think we could learn enough right away that we could be much of a match against a fully grown murderer," she said hesitantly. "It's a good idea, and it might make mum feel better, but-"

"No, I don't mean _that_ way."

The younger girl flipped the book around and held her finger to a spell on the page.

"We can learn to defend ourselves with _magic!_ " she beamed. "I mean, the self-defense training is probably a good idea, in general, based on what your dad-"

"Your dad too," Hermione quickly corrected with a gentle smile.

Dahlia rolled her eyes.

"Based on what _Dad_ grumbles about teenage boys, but against an adult, even just a couple simple spells would probably help us get away or call for help if something _did_ happen because of that maniac or, you know, creeps in general," she reasoned. "And that book about law said we're allowed to use magic in front of Muggles to defend ourselves. Their- Er-"

She tried to recall the word, but it seemed to leave a vacant space in her memory, though the definition, function, and department they resided in within the Ministry of Magic came quickly to mind.

"The Aurors?" Hermione offered.

"Yes! They clear that sort of thing up if an underage witch or wizard is attacked in a non-magical area."

"Well, I suppose," she gnawed on her lip, deliberating. "I guess we haven't gotten in trouble so far."

"Why would you?"

Hermione's freckles darkened a bit as she flushed.

" _Hogwarts: A History_ has the school's charter and code of conduct in the back. It forbids using magic outside of school, but I asked Mr Ollivander before we left Diagon Alley about it, because it seemed so odd to me. I thought it didn't make much sense if we're to be assigned we homework and whatnot over hols, and _he_ said the Hogwarts Express has enchantments built in so our wand signatures are registered in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement the first time we go to school," she whispered guiltily. "He said no one's bothered to make him activate the Trace, himself, and since they can't even tell if it happens in a magical home, even if they are Traced, he didn't see the harm. He warned that if I cast anything really powerful, though, or blew something up, Magic Reversal may check in if there aren't any known adult wizards in the area. So right now, their sensors aren't flagging us as underaged."

"Well, that's clearly unfair," Dahlia frowned. "And sloppy."

"Yes, well, wait until you see Diagon Alley," Hermione huffed. "It's absolutely wonderful, of course, but from what I can tell, they're culturally a bit behind the times. Even their fashion's horribly out of date, and I usually don't notice that sort of thing."

They presented Dahlia's idea to Dan and Safiya over dinner, and despite worries their upstanding parents might dismiss the idea out of hand, the couple quickly agreed to take the children to London for the explicit purpose of purchasing Dahlia's wand and beginner's defense texts. Safiya parked the Grangers' sensible, silver sedan in a multi-level carpark beside a cinema in Chinatown and led the way through the milling Saturday morning crowds. Dahlia had not really known what she should expect, as most of Hermione's descriptions had (predictably) been about the shops where she got her school things or the more amazing magical wonders around her, but she never would have guessed The Leaky Cauldron had anything to offer, save perhaps greasy chips and grimy floors.

"This is it!" Hermione said excitedly, rushing to a dingy, darkened pub squeezed between a book shop on one side and a very retro-looking record shop on the other.

The other shoppers' eyes slid straight from one to the other, and Dahlia suspected they may not be able to see it at all.

Her parents urged her forward as Hermione held open the door, which creaked loudly, and she had to blink away an afterimage when it closed behind them. She immediately got the impression whoever owned the Leaky Cauldron either did not believe in proper lighting, or thought 'dark and ominous' a perfect atmosphere for a pub. The girl also forgot the non verbalised complaint the moment her eyes adjusted to the gloom, for behind the shrunken, top hat-wearing, bald barman, glasses hovered in mid-air, drying themselves before stacking neatly in a pyramid beside the taps.

"Welcome! Do come in, and mind you shut that door tightly behind you," he waved with a toothless smile. "Cold does a number on my old bones. What can I do for you fine folk?"

"Good morning. Tom, right?"

The barman tipped his hat, his smile widening.

"We're here to get our youngest's supplies for Hogwarts," Dan said blithely. "Just found out she was a witch a while back, and we thought we may as well do it early since we were in town."

"Ah!" he said jovially. "Happy birthday, then, little miss."

Dahlia blinked and smiled a little too slowly as her brain caught up with the conversation, pulled from the other casually performed magic all around her. She had been staring with silent amazement at a tiny, grease-darkened portrait against one wall having a perfectly coherent argument with the man sitting at the table beneath it.

"Er- Thanks, sir," she said, trying to pass her slow reaction off as shyness.

"Is it all right if we go through?" Hermione chirped, practically vibrating with anticipation. "She couldn't come last time."

Tom's eyes crinkled with amusement, and he made a show of bowing deeply in the direction of the door.

"Go on, little'un. Don't let this old barkeep stall you."

Safiya sighed at her daughter's near-rudeness but flashed a sweet smile to the proprietor.

"Thanks, Tom."

The family proceeded through a shabby door out into a small, bricked-in courtyard containing a few weeds and two dented bins set against the pub's wall. Hermione stood to the right of these, tracing her wand up and over the brick directly above the bin nearest her. She knew what would happen, now - Hermione had described the hidden arch in detail - but it was still amazing to see for herself. The brick the vinewood wand tapped gave a little shudder, seemed to wriggle out of the mortar bordering its place, and its neighbours followed its example by folding and twisting away from them, pushing outward until an arch formed onto a narrow, winding street.

Hermione took her hand and tugged her forward, and Dahlia gaped.

Storefronts shone with incredible displays - self stirring cauldrons, auto-measuring potions kits, dragonhide gloves, polished broomsticks, barrels of newt eyes, stacks of snoozing owls and rope-skipping rats - and the _people_ astonished just as well.

Almost everyone wore outer robes of varying colours and fabrics - some even sparkled with tiny, scintillating stars about the hems and sleeves - and underneath, they seemed to favour styles reminiscent of the late Edwardian period. Women wore long skirts or dresses (reaching the calf or lower), blouses, and waistcoats. Men, too, favoured the old-fashioned garment over high-waisted, closely fitted trousers. The more casually garbed wore slipovers or jumpers, but the robes were almost universal. A lot of the children Dahlia could see - all her age or younger, since everyone who turned eleven before September first were at Hogwarts - forewent the long, billowing outer garment, and almost none of the girls wore trousers or jeans.

She felt a wave of appreciation toward Safiya, who had recommended against her original outfit, knowing her dislike of the spotlight. Even so, the small family stood out. Safiya, for the brightly coloured scarf wrapping her head, and the others for their lack of wizardwear. Dahlia felt herself drifting closer to the woman as they approached a very plain shop with an old, peeling sign proclaiming it: _Ollivanders_. A polished wand sat upon a faded purple cushion in the window, looking terribly unassuming compared to the flamboyant displays in every direction.

A bell tinkled when they opened the glass-fronted door, and sunlight briefly lit innumerable dust motes before they filed in and blocked the beams. It felt unnaturally quiet, and yet the girls felt the tingle of magic brushing against their skin, almost humming in the air. It seemed every shadow might hold some profound discovery of magical esoterica, seemed the thousands of narrow boxes stacked to the ceiling and fading into the darkness behind the dusty counter might float into the air at any moment.

Dahlia approached the counter at Hermione's nudge, and a moment later, an old gentleman with a double-albert watch chain adoring his pinstriped satin waistcoat beneath very plain, slimly fitted black robes and large, protruding, pale grey eyes stepped silently into the light of the single lamp hanging over his counter to survey them all unblinkingly.

"Hermione Granger," he hummed, "Ten and three-quarter inches, vine wood, dragon heartstring- Hello, again."

"Hello, Mr Ollivander," the usually bubbly girl said softly.

"Mr and Mrs Granger," he continued, nodding to the adults. "But who are you, young lady?"

Dahlia gulped and forced herself not to look away from his penetrating stare.

"Dahlia Evans, Sir," she mumbled. "The Grangers just adopted me, and we found out I was a witch, like Hermione, so… Here I am."

"Indeed?" he frowned as if he had forgotten something before a placid smile curled his lips. "Well, let's get to know one another, shall we? Which is your wand arm?"

"Er-" she blanked. "My right, I think."

A coiled tape measure sprang into the air and began taking measurements, first of her right arm, then each finger, between her eyes, around her head - it went on all by itself while Mr Ollivander seemingly ignored it and began running his fingers over the narrow boxes, speaking almost absentmindedly.

"The wand chooses the witch, Miss Evans, so I hope you'll be patient while we find the correct one for you. Have you happened to try Miss Granger's wand?" he asked, pulling a few boxes down, sending them to glide smoothly through the air and land in a neat pile on the counter.

Dahlia glanced to her sister before answering.

"Yes, Sir."

"And how did it feel?"

She looked to Hermione, but the girl shrugged, apparently as confused as she.

"I suppose it felt warm, but a bit awkward to hold," she said. "It worked for me, but it wasn't really- I'm really not sure how to describe it. Does that make any sense?"

"Absolutely it does, child," the wandmaker said kindly, emerging again from the gloom with another armful. "I would not think a vine wand would fit you as well as another wood, though one might do a serviceable job, for a time. In any case, your description tells us you're more likely to be suited to a dragon heartstring or phoenix feather core."

He waved his hand, and the first row of wands lined up on the counter gracefully unboxed themselves. Each slender bit of wood rest upon a velvet or satin lining, and each looked different when Dahlia bent over them curiously. All carried a unique design worked into the tight grain. Some shone with varnish, and some subtly gleamed, but a few others seemed not to carry the slightest finish over the intricate carvings.

"Let's give this one a try," Ollivander suggested, offering his customer the first. "Eleven and one-quarter inches, dragon heartstring, willow. Pliable, a tad swishy, and excellent for charms and defensive work."

Dahlia took it in her hand, and the wandmaker stared at her expectantly.

"Give it a wave, dear," he finally suggested.

"Er-" she frowned. "Should I do a spell?"

He surveyed her curiously, stroking his chin a few moments, before nodding slowly.

"By all means."

" _Wingardium Leviosa!"_ she incanted at a paperweight, glad she had finally managed the charm the week prior.

Her parents jumped and Hermione squeaked as it rocketed into the ceiling, embedding itself with a loud _BANG!_ in the dark panelling overhead and cracking the surrounding wood. Dahlia stared at it, horrified.

"Oh, good show!" Mr Ollivander chuckled unexpectedly, taking the wand gently from the girl's grasp. "Excellent wand work, but I think you're a bit too much for this one."

Dahlia didn't know what he meant, but felt understandably hesitant to pick up the next after Ollivander did a little shuffling with the options laid out on the counter.

"Let's try again. Here we are," he smiled hopefully. "An unusual and powerful combination: Unicorn, ten and one-half inches, firm, Hawthorn."

But as soon as Dahlia's fingers touched the wand, his eyes bulged wider and he whipped it away.

"No, no, no, that wouldn't do at all…"

Dahlia started to become very worried when, fifteen minutes later, the counter held an impressive pile of rejects and a rapidly dwindling selection of possibilities, but despite her concern, the old wandmaker seemed more an more enraptured by the experience.

"Tricky, tricky," he hummed, disappearing for what felt like the hundredth time into the shadows between the long shelves stretching into the back of the shop. "Not to worry, Miss Evans. All this means is that your match shall be truly magnificent in your hands!"

He hummed a little to himself before falling unnaturally silent, and Dahlia squinted to try and see what stalled him.

"Interesting," he frowned, returning much more slowly with only three boxes.

He carefully lifted and nested the lids of each extremely dusty box, slid them across the counter, and stared curiously at Dahlia's face. She wasn't looking at him, though. She eyed the first of the three boxes, and for some reason, she felt her heart start racing. Based on the others she had tried, it looked to be about eleven inches long, with an almost unfinished-looking handle that retained its dark bark and narrowed into a slender, graceful shaft. She lifted it from its satin nest, and immediately, blue flames shot from its end to spiral around her in a glorious ribbon. Her hand shot up to shield her face instinctively, but before she could think to do anything else, a second wand - the third resting on the counter - slapped into her palm with such force it almost stung. An unnatural, warm wind swept the shop, blowing Dahlia's hair into a gravity defying mess fluttering about her face and shoulders, and just as suddenly, both the effects ceased, leaving the store in disarray and stunned silence.

"Phoenix and holly, eleven inches _and_ the aspen… Curious," Ollivander murmured, appraising the girl intently. "Never in all my years did I think I would match either of those wands, Miss Evans. Very curious."

He gently accepted both wands, slipped them into velvet bags, then placed them carefully in their respective boxes before placing them on a side table. A roll of brown paper popped from the edge nearest the wall and began wrapping the two boxes in one, neat parcel.

"Er- _Both_ , Sir?" Dahlia asked after he began tidying up his shop with a few neat flicks and jabs of his own focus.

"Yes, dear girl," the wandmaker shrugged. "Both, and I'll not charge you for the second."

"But why?" Dan asked, sounding a little concerned. "Why did you say it's curious, and how come Hermione-"

"Oh, make no mistake, Mr Granger," Ollivander gently interjected, smiling at the bushy-haired girl. "Your daughter's no less powerful than Miss Evans, here, and I would say they are equally matched for talent, though they may be skilled in different things."

He frowned a little sadly as he picked up the parcel and placed it in Dahlia's hands.

"It is curious, sir and ladies, because the first wand had a brother, an unfortunately notorious twin whose owner turned it to great, terrible deeds," he said gravely. "I am unsure how much you know of our history, but like your own, it has been riddled with strife as often as prosperity, and there was a wizard not too long ago who sought to tear both muggle and wizard asunder for the sole purpose of building a throne atop the rubble and bones."

Something churned unpleasantly in Dahlia's belly.

"The phoenix who gave the tail feather for that tool of destruction gave another, and only one other, precisely one year before the Dark Lord fell," he continued. "Holly wands are powerful, paired with phoenix feathers, well-"

He shrugged.

"If it were only that, this would be a curious enough case, but for the aspen wand to choose you, too - Now _that_ is something quite remarkable," he mused. "It was made over two hundred years ago by my great grandfather during a visit to the Americas. Normally, we Ollivanders only use dragon heartstring, unicorn tail hairs, or phoenix tail feathers for their versatility and reliability, but one morning, after a violent storm, a thunderbird found my grandfather and presented him with the core now residing in that aspen rod."

The old man ran a tired hand over his head and seemed suddenly unsure.

"I studied the creatures as a young apprentice, and I can say with surety it will be a perfect foil to its partner. Thunderbirds are solitary, incredibly powerful sentient creatures capable of producing great storms and calling rain where they will," the wizard continued. "They are enormous predators revered through the American southwest, are known to bond only rarely with humans and then, only to one in their very long lifetime. Wands made from their feathers are capable of extremely powerful and complex magic, and they will not go willingly to another. Their wielders are known throughout history as masters of transfiguration and invention, paired with aspen…"

He trailed off at the confused, concerned looks on his customers' faces.

"Oh, apologies," he smiled. "Just the ramblings of an old man. It is an unusual happenstance, and a portent of a powerful young witch, but it's something to be glad of. I recommend, Miss Evans, that you begin practicing with your left hand, too. I imagine you will find some spells easier through the aspen than the holly, and vice versa."

The family left the shop twenty galleons poorer - Dan suggested they purchase arm holsters for both girls in addition to Dahlia's new foci - a few minutes later. In light of their somewhat unsettling experience, they went not to the book shop, as they had intended, but to the cheerful ice cream parlour owned by a wizard so genial, Dahlia could not imagine anyone disliking him. The sugar, a rare treat for children of dentists and dentists themselves, soothed and entertained far more than the girl might have thought.

"Ah!" the owner grinned upon finding them seated around a table unnaturally warm for being outside. "Grangers, wasn't it?"

"I'm so glad you remembered us! Good morning Mr Fortescue," Hermione greeted politely while her parents shook his hand one after the other. "This is my sister, Dahlia."

"And hello to you as well, Miss Dahlia," the wizard tipped his candy-striped hat and tapped the table with his wand.

A disc of ice seemingly coalesced on the table's surface, engraved with frosted menu items in flavours she had never seen before.

 _Lavender Lemon Dream, Flavour-Changing Fruit Fancy, Quadruple Chocolate with Chipotle Raspberry Sauce, Tiramisu Tower -_

She had not made it through the listing before it was her turn to order.

"Er-" she cast around for something especially appealing and came up empty. "Surprise me?"

"Oh, excellent!" he crowed. "I've got just the thing. No allergies to anything, right?"

Dahlia shook her head mutely and slumped against the back of her chair, a bit dazed, as the wizard disappeared into his shop.

"It's all a little overwhelming for me, and it's my second time here," Safiya said conspiratorially. "How are you feeling?"

"Like you said," she mumbled, rubbing her forehead, tracing the odd scar over her eyebrow unconsciously. "A little overwhelmed. I'm really glad we came, though."

She added the last quickly, afraid to be thought ungrateful.

"It's all so amazing, but it's a lot to take in."

"It's a whole new culture," Hermione agreed reasonably. "I'm sure we'll acclimate as time goes on. In any case, I'm glad we've got a few more months before we actually leave. It'll give us opportunity to figure things out."

"Too right," Dan nodded.

A moment later, four enormous sundaes appeared on the table, and Dahlia quickly lost herself to Lavender Earl Grey ice cream that felt cold in her mouth, warmed on the way down, and overloaded her tastebuds with the distinctive flavour of bergamot with just a touch of the lavender.

"He's a genius," she said almost reverently when only the glass dish remained.

"Mmm," Safiya hummed contentedly. "It is dreadfully good. Make sure you keep up with brushing your teeth and flossing when you go to school, though. I can't begin to think of the state of the other children's mouths if this is the decadence they're used to."

"Do wizards have dentists?" Hermione wondered aloud, finishing off a creamy melon concoction dotted with squishy, subtly sweet pearls she insisted made an amazing accompaniment to the base flavours and textures. "I haven't seen any signs for one."

"Well, I took a look at some of the healing texts out of curiosity our last trip," Safiya shrugged. "I think there are spells to handle most of the usual issues, and healers do it as routine maintenance."

"So, no braces?" the somewhat buck-toothed girl asked hopefully.

"I still think I'd be more comfortable if you got them, honey," Dan firmly asserted. "Not unless I can get a detailed explanation of what said spells do. Wands shoot fire and blow things up. Who knows what could happen?"

Hermione drooped in her seat but cheered considerably when Mr Fortescue insisted her parents only pay fifty per cent of their bill as part of what he insisted was a spontaneous "new sister discount" and not the result of the children's copious praise of his aplomb as an ice cream left the shop in much better spirits than when they left Ollivanders and made their way to their next destination a few doors down.

Like non-magical book stores, Flourish & Blotts Booksellers featured the strong smell of pressed paper and slightly sweet ink, shelf upon shelf of diverse tomes, and colourful displays featuring especially popular or new books. There, however, the comparisons ended. Where one might expect tidy, clutter-free aisles in a muggle store, Dahlia found uneven piles of overstock reaching sometimes to the high ceiling. Perusing the shelves elicited bemusement due to the complete absence of any conventional system of organisation. The four tall bookcases dedicated to defense, for example, featured titles organised not alphabetically or by author's name, but by cost and popularity (in descending order), followed by level of difficulty.

In short, the system seemed completely arbitrary without expert elaboration.

"It's useful for a shop, I suppose," Dahlia hummed, thumbing through and quickly discarding a supposed defense manual by Gilderoy Lockhart. "They could use with a few signs, though."

"I imagine there are few enough muggleborn customers they don't feel the need to post that sort of information," Safiya said wryly, dropping a slimmer volume titled _Waverly's Workbook for Basic Self Defense: A Parent's Guide for Protecting Hearth and Home_ into the wicker basket hooked over her elbow.

Hermione rolled her eyes and tucked _Spellman's Condensed Self Defense_ under her arm as she rounded the corner.

"Well, it's not very inclusive," she said primly, nose already in another book.

Someone perusing the shelves behind them snorted, and Dahlia turned to find an unpleasantly pinched-looking boy surveying them in a superior sort of way.

"Well, what can you expect?" he asked condescendingly. "It's not as if you can expect us to waste our valuable money and time explaining every simple thing to you muggleborns when everyone else gets on just fine. That's the problem with you lot. You seem to think there's some sort of expectation we bend over backwards for you."

Dahlia immediately disliked him.

"Excuse you," she snapped cuttingly, crossing her arms. "I don't think anyone asked your opinion, but seeing as you insist on giving it, I'll have you know we'd at least have the manners not to insult your ignorance if you walked into one of our stores. But maybe rudeness is a cultural trait inherent to wizard-born people."

The boy's pale cheeks pinked blotchily, and Hermione put a hand on Dahlia's sleeve.

"You don't know what you're talking about, mudblood," he sneered. "I would watch what you say to proper wizards if you don't want someone to show you and your little half-breed your places."

Hermione flinched as if someone had slapped her, and Dahlia whipped her friend's wand from her coat pocket before she realized she'd done it.

"Apologize," she demanded lowly, pointing the thing in the boy's face. "Or I swear I'll make you sorry."

"Dahlia," Safiya firmly interjected, stepping forward from where she and her husband had been quietly observing. "While I understand and appreciate you defending your sister, that isn't an appropriate reaction. Put it away, right now."

"I would listen to your elders," another voice drawled.

The girl reluctantly handed it back, but maintained her furious glare as a tall, dour man with greasy, shoulder-length hair and a hooked nose stalked forward, his black robes billowing behind him, and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. He examined the family with a piercing stare, lingering particularly on the youngest of their number. Dahlia met his gaze unapologetically despite feeling suspiciously like he could x-ray her thoughts, but quickly pushed her discomfort aside.

"Is there a problem here, Draco?" he enunciated in clipped tones.

"No, Godfather," the boy denied innocently. "Just a friendly debate."

"If that was your version of 'friendly,' I'd hate to see how you treat your enemies," Dahlia grit, teeth clenched.

"Dahlia," Mrs Granger warned softly, hand still subtly clasped over Dan's clenched fist, before turning to the unknown wizard. "I'm afraid, Mr..?"

" _Professor_ Severus Snape."

"Professor Snape," she amended, "that young Draco, here, was speaking quite rudely moments ago. I'm sorry for my own daughter's behaviour - and rest assured shall be speaking to her about it - but I do believe he at least owes my eldest an apology."

He raised an eyebrow at her boldness, and an ironic smirk curled his lips.

"I daresay you'll find your expectations sadly misinformed," he thrummed. "Come along, Draco."

He turned with a swish of his robe, Dan made a rude gesture at his back, and the boy named Draco smirked as he followed him from the shop.

"I really hope the other professors are nicer," Hermione breathed uncertainly. "He was really very unpleasant."

"What he was is an utter ti-"

"Daniel!" Safiya smacked his arm. "Language."

The girls giggled, and the mother ushered them toward the cashiers. She deposited her husband and children in the queue before stepping away to get a couple more books. They paid quickly with the remaining gold and silver coins in Mrs Granger's heavily depleted purse, exited the cramped book shop, and soon departed the hidden alley altogether.

Dahlia walked with her hand in Safiya's as they strolled toward the car. She shifted the bundled parcel of books under her right arm and sneaked an anxious glance at the woman's face when she thought she wasn't looking, only to find the mother smiling affectionately at her. No one talked aside from absent commentary on the magical centre, the more mundane storefronts they passed, and prospective venues for lunch. Dahlia's anxiety grew until they reached the car, depositing the parcels in the boot before settling in with a collective sigh of relief.

"Well," the woman said genially as she backed out of their space. "What do you have to say for yourself, dear?"

She caught Dahlia's gaze in the rear-view mirror, and the girl had the grace to look a little remorseful, though it came more from disappointing her adoptive parents than regret over her actions. She was honest about it, too.

"I'm sorry I pulled a wand on him, but I'm not sorry for standing up for Hermione," she said softly. "Bullies like him need to be knocked down the first time they try something, or they just get worse."

"Hear, hear," Dan grumbled from the front passenger seat.

Hermione shared a covert smile with her at their mother's answering sigh of exasperation.

"I know you've dealt with children like him before," the mother tried again. "But I want you to consider my perspective, as well."

She nodded, soothed by Safiya's calm demeanour.

"You girls are going to be attending a boarding school where your father and I can't come and help you if something happens," she said seriously. "We want you to stand up for yourselves, but you need to be careful about how you're perceived when you do. In a perfect world, you would be able to rely unreservedly upon your teachers, but it's clear to me there's a steep bias against families like ours, and if it appears like you have done or were prepared to respond violently, I don't think you'll find the authorities as forgiving as they might be to someone else, and it's not appropriate to react with with your wand or fists because someone hurts your feelings."

Dahlia mulled that over for several moments, noting Dan's pensive silence and Hermione's small, sad frown.

"That being said, I'm not going to tell you never to use violence in your own defense," Safiya continued. "Kids can be cruel, and I'd rather you get detention than let someone hurt you. I just want you to be careful that if you do, it's because you know without a shadow of a doubt there were no other reasonable options available. I'd just appreciate it if you keep that in mind."

She left things at that, and Dahlia relaxed, reassured she wasn't really in trouble and feeling appropriately chastised. Dan pushed a cassette into the player, and Safiya hummed along with him as the Beatles' nonsensical lyrics filled the space. The city's narrow streets and towering buildings gave way to suburbs as they got further and further from central London.

"Thanks for saying something," Hermione murmured while they waited in the car for Safiya to finish paying for Chinese takeaway a short way from home. "No one's really stood up for me before aside from Mum and Dad."

Dahlia took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"That's what friends are for."

"That's what _sisters_ are for," Hermione corrected.

Dahlia rolled her eyes but smiled broadly. It felt wonderful to be part of a family.


	6. Changeling

Disclaimer: All you recognize belongs to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers and publishers. I do not profit for this work.

* * *

Chapter Six: Changeling

* * *

Winter gave way to spring quickly between classes, homework, spellcasting practice, their situational awareness and defense classes (which Safiya insisted on after a third kidnapping report featured on the morning news), and family time (which Dan insisted on just to get the kids out of their rooms, for a bit), sometimes involving group study into wizarding culture and law. The girls progressed rapidly both in spell memorisation and casting in addition to learning basic evasion and escape maneuvers, doing much to put their parents' minds at ease. Dahlia had a little bit of trouble adjusting to her own wands after practicing with Hermione's for nearly a month, but with a little experimentation, she found the holly-and-phoenix-feather focus picked up charms and spells designed for pure defense or evasion faster, while its aspen-and-thunderbird twin amplified offensive spells to an almost dangerous degree.

This discovery came at the expense of Safiya Granger's favourite rosebush during a back garden practice session, which resulted in a week-long telly ban for the girls and an unnamed punishment for Dan that made him grumble sullenly for the duration. As the young witches had improved, their father volunteered to play the bad guy, and they turned to the cold, damp outdoors for extra room. Kitted out in a friend's hockey armour, he let them take turns evading holds and incapacitating him. Hermione, who lacked in speed, made up for her weakness with very creative and subtle spellwork.

Dahlia, on the other hand, possessed unusual stamina and agility after years of avoiding bullies in school and children's homes, and so fell first on her innate ability to squirm out of tight holds and get around a larger opponent. Usually, she was well out of range of Dan's arms by the time he caught up with her, and she would either use leg-lock or another movement impeding jinx, her favourite of which she nicknamed the Slow-Mo. One afternoon, however, Mr Granger switched tack and went for Dahlia's right arm, rather than her left, in his initial grapple.

This created an excellent learning experience for all parties involved.

Dan grabbed and twisted Dahlia's arm behind her back, and Dahlia, unused to dodging in the opposite direction and unable to reach her holly wand, shoved her free hand into her left coat pocket, pushed the aspen rod to point behind her, and cast a banishing spell. Luckily, it missed her adoptive dad entirely, but it drilled into the ground at the base of the rosebush and (as things were wont to do when struck with knockback jinxes) flew backward, uprooting itself entirely and making a horrible noise against the shed into which it crashed. Mrs Granger stormed out of the house moments later, and practice ended abruptly.

As it grew warmer outside, Dahlia's thoughts turned increasingly to practicing magic or spending time with the Grangers whenever her mind was not appropriately engaged. Trigonometry, to Hermione's constant frustration, often lent itself to her sister's daydreams more often than not. Generally, she passed these classes in some state of disinterest, but on that particular May Wednesday, the unthinkable happened.

The girls sat next to one another, as usual, in the front of the room. Hermione stared straight ahead, hardly blinking as her hand darted between one side of her page and the other, making subject notations on the left and jotting down definitions and calculations on the right. Her hair poofed up over her crown n a voluminous, frizzy bun. Dahlia sat with her textbook open, posting colourful sticky notes on the relevant bits and writing example problems annotated with page and topic on a separate sheet. Mr Denson called for a volunteer at the front of the room, and as Cecilia Carmichael walked up the central aisle to take the dry erase marker, one of the 'blonde brigade' (as she and Hermione had nicknamed them) subtly nudged her school bag so it fell from its hook and tripped the volunteer. She fell hard, bruising her knees. Her calculator clattered across the floor, and Dahlia jumped to help her up while Joanne, the subtle schoolbag-nudger, giggled behind her hand. With everyone's eyes on Dahlia and the mousy, skinny child, no one else could reliably see what happened save for the green-eyed witch.

Cecilia shook off the girl's hand with a muttered thank-you as Dahlia helped her to her feet. She had brushed it off with a smile, passing the calculator back, when an eraser flew from the opposite side of the room to smack Joanne on the back of the head.

"Who threw that?" Mr Denson demanded after waving Cecilia to the board and presenting her with a selection of felt-tip pens. "I'll not have things thrown about in this classroom. This is Trig-One, not Physics."

Joanne glared around at everyone positioned to have thrown the thing, but no one appeared particularly guilty because no one had physically launched the projectile; It had launched from a wall-mounted shelf to the right of the whiteboard, just beyond the teacher's peripheral vision the opposite direction from everyone watching Cecilia's little spill, precisely at the moment she glanced at the bully from beneath the limp, stringy curtain of her hair. The class calmed and quickly returned to normal procedures beneath Mr Denson's annoyed frown. Hermione threw sympathetic glances toward Cecilia's seat throughout the remainder of class, but Dahlia could not focus on her or the teacher much after watching that eraser zoom through the air unaided. _She_ hadn't done it, and Hermione obviously hadn't a clue. She knew of only one power equipped to defy physics so blatantly.

Though her studious friend usually dawdled after class to reorganise her notes or discuss homework with the teacher, Dahlia packed up Hermione's books and looped arms to escort her out and into the hallway.

"What's the big hurry?" she complained when the shorter girl finally released their hand. "And why are we in the toilet?"

She looked around at the gleaming monochromatic blue tiles bemusedly. Neither she nor Dahlia was really the type to coordinate lavatory visits. The girl peeked under every stall door, further increasing Hermione's confusion, which heightened rapidly to alarm when the girl clicked her fingers, shooting her wand out of her sleeve, and pointed it at the door with a rapid jab and twist.

" _Kleiséro,_ " she whispered, and the bolt slid shut.

"Dahli!"

She wheeled around, eyes wide.

"Cecilia Carmichael's a witch!"

"What?" Hermione blinked. "Whyever would you think that?"

"No one threw the eraser," Dahlia hissed, cheeks flushing with excitement. "I _saw_ it when everyone was looking at her. It flew off the shelf by the door!"

The taller girl frowned, eyes glazing for a moment and lips moving as she mouthed figures, before finally shaking her head.

"It's extremely statistically unlikely," she said doubtfully. "Just you and I are pushing it for Crawley as far as normal probabilities go. Are you sure?"

"Positive!" her sister insisted. "We _have_ to talk to her. I think she's older than me-"

"Everyone's older than you," Hermione teased. "You skipped."

"Well, I'm clever, and so are you, and when you eliminate the impossible, what remains must be true," she said urgently. "I'm telling you, no one threw that thing, and I saw Cecilia glaring at Joanne-bloody-Bloomingblonde-"

"Language!" her sister chided. "And that's not nice. It's one thing to call them the Blonde Brigade, but we shouldn't butcher her name. I admit she's horrid, but Mr and Mrs Bloomingdale are quite lovely."

"Hermione!" Dahlia groaned, clasping the girl's forearms. "We'll probably be going to school with her. Don't you think the Cecilia thing's a bit more important? You remember what it was like when you thought you were the only one, right?"

She nodded hesitantly and pulled her lower lip between her teeth.

"I suppose."

Dahlia beamed and cast a _finite_ over her shoulder.

"Excellent!"

They rushed to their their next class and spent the next hour surreptitiously passing notes about when they should try to talk to her. After a little bit of back-and-forth, they finally decided on Lunch. It was the only time in which everyone in their year were in the same place and able to converse with some semblance of privacy, lost among the other hundred-some girls. They left their third hour classes - gymnastics for Dahlia and dance for Hermione - and joined the throng moving toward the bright dining hall.

"Where does she normally sit?" Dahlia frowned.

"I'm sorry to admit it, but the Blonde Brigade probably know better than we do," she mused, unpacking her customary salad, fruit and nuts as she surveyed the churning sea of navy and burgundy. "We have a bad habit of not really interacting with the others."

The green-eyed witch crossed her legs on the bench and bit and poked her corned beef and cabbage a absently.

"I don't know," she hummed wryly. "I was under the impression people think we're weird: the frizzy swot and the speccy orphan."

She bumped her shoulder against Hermione's to soften the words.

"I like your glasses, and you're ours, now," she said sweetly.

"And you know I love how clever you are, even when you drive me mad, and I get a laugh watching people try to see around your hair when they're too lazy to sit in front, in the first place."

The girl snorted and elbowed her back.

"You like my hair because you can hide behind me when you're feeling antisocial," she quipped.

Dahlia felt her cheeks warm a little.

"Maybe," she shrugged. "I think you underestimate how pretty it is, though."

They bantered back and forth through the remaining hour and walked together to change out their books, never once seeing the skinny, shy girl. She didn't show up for Dahlia's fourth hour chemistry, or Hermione's French class, either. In fact, no one they asked had seen Cecilia since she practically fled from maths that morning. The teachers seemed increasingly on edge as the day drew to a close, as well, so by the time Mr Granger arrived to pick up the girls, their unease had transformed to worry.

"Is there any particular reason we're so quiet this afternoon?" Dan finally asked after pulling into the garage following an utterly silent drive home.

Hermione tilted her head slightly in nonverbal support, and Dahlia loosed a long sigh.

"Well, one of the girls from class, Cecilia Carmichael - I'm not sure if we've mentioned her - One of the blonde bullies tripped her up in Trigonometry today, and we wanted to talk to her and see that she was all right, but she never showed up to lunch," she explained. "Or class, as a matter of fact. The teachers weren't telling us anything though."

"That doesn't sound good, at all," the father agreed, lifting the girls' bags and opening the door for them.

They filed into the foyer, hung up their coats and school bags, and made their way toward the kitchen table. Dan dropped his own briefcase by the study door before joining them and began assembling a light snack with quick, practiced movements. The comforting, crisp sound of his knife as it sliced through bright apples, the subtle suction and gritty scrape of a spoon against the peanut butter jar, and their combined scents filled the room.

"Do you know if they were able to reach her parents?"

"I don't think so," Dahlia said. "I'm pretty sure her mum's a single mother, and I think the teachers would've looked less worried if they had gotten a hold of her at work. They would have asked the kids if they knew for sure she was missing-missing, right?"

"I should hope so," the father grumbled, sliding a plate each before the children and pressing kisses to their crowns. "We picked Marie Curie's partly because of their safety and bullying policies. Hermione's last school was just awful."

"The kids there were pretty mean," she admitted. "It's definitely better, but teachers don't have eyes everywhere."

"Yes, well," Dan harrumphed. "They ought to."

The girls giggled at his stubbornness but let the subject drop while they finished their snack and discussed the rest of the day to The Germs' upbeat and slightly chaotic music playing in the background. The dentist regaled the girls with a dramatised retelling of how he received the bite mark on his hand, and Safiya immediately switched the record to The Doors the moment she came in and heard the punk and her family's raucous laughter.

"Homework, you lot!" she called into the kitchen, where her husband stood, frozen mid-stroke on the air guitar, staring at her with a gaping mouth and a betrayed expression on his face.

"You can't just take it off before the song's over," the girls heard him complain on their way up the stairs. "It's sacrilege!"

"That dissonance is sacrilege," she countered, shaking out her hair. "And much too much after the horrible stuff Debra insists on listening to. Are you sure we can't tell her it disturbs people waiting in the reception room?"

Hermione and Dahlia gathered in the smaller upstairs study on either side of a wide, heavy table with their books and homework spread around them for the hour or so it took to complete the night's assignments and organise notes for the following day, then, relieved of their weekday duties, changed into loungewear and joined their parents in the sitting room for telly. The girls read while waiting for the news to finish and for their time with the nintendo to begin, but just before the newscaster signed off, she broke off her planned notices, and a new, scrolling caption over a red background slid across the lower edge of the screen.

" _This just in - Mrs Catherine Carmichael of Haslett Avenue phoned police this evening after arriving at Marie Curie's Girls School to find daughter Cecelia had been missing for several hours. Staff and school security reported they attempted to contact Mrs Carmichael immediately after noting her initial absence in her fourth hour course and conducted a thorough search of the grounds and surrounding area. They notified police shortly thereafter, but authorities achieved little success in the search until they received Mrs Carmichael's call. Chief reporter John Efferidge broadcasts now from the scene-"_

The image shifted from the pleasant brunette to a grey-haired, slim man with a grave expression and thin moustache in front of a neat but modest row of multilevel buildings lit with flashing emergency vehicle lights. Officers milled around behind the reporter, who stood beside a woman clearly terrified, going by the worry lines and tears on her face.

" _John Efferidge reporting live from the Carmichael family's building on Haslett Avenue- Police arrived on scene a few hours ago after Mrs Carmichael discovered her flat empty and her daughter's room marked with the Crawley Kidnapper's signature. Unlike in previous cases, there's yet hope for Cecilia, as she has not been found on the scene this evening."_

Safiya's hand flew to her mouth as the scene changed. A large black blur, pixelated to preserve whatever evidence the police thought inappropriate for television, scarred the pink, floral wallpaper above a message burned into the wall:

 _Rake out the Red Coals, Madam_

 _For There Your Child Shall Lie_

"What does that mean?" Dahlia asked shakily while on the screen, Mrs Carmichael pleaded for any and all with information about her daughter to come forward immediately.

"I'm pretty sure it's from a poem," Dan frowned. "Maybe American? Hold on."

He rose and walked around the corner to reference one of the many anthologies housed within the downstairs study's shelves. A few muffled thumps sounded during his search, making Safiya flinch, and both girls left their places on the plush rug to curl against her sides. The woman's soft, graceful arms wrapped around them tightly. Meanwhile, interviews with tired and anxious looking teachers, including Mr Denson and head teacher Melody Rivers, and photos of shy, mousy Cecilia splashed across the screen.

" _Police are reviewing Marie Curie's School security footage now in hopes of finding leads in the search for eleven-year-old Cecilia Carmichael-"_

"Got it," Dan called from the study.

He returned to the sofa with a thick, leather-bound volume of early American poetry and turned it around for the girls to read. With each line, Hermione and Dahlia both grew more worried. Safiya and Dan watched their faces pale rapidly, and then Hermione jumped from her seat, nearly headbutting her father, and thundered up the stairs.

"I need to check something!" she shouted halfway there.

"What's this about?" Mr and Mrs Granger asked Dahlia worriedly. "What's frightened you so much?"

"Er-" she began, unsure. "We just didn't want to worry you. We told Dad about it before we got home, but sort of forgot and then- Well, I didn't tell you, earlier, but I'm pretty sure I saw Cecelia use magic by accident, today. You know, like Hermione and the books. A whiteboard eraser flew and hit a girl who had just tripped her. We were going to talk to her about it, after, but she never showed up at lunch or any of our classes."

Safiya's arm tightened around Dahlia's shoulders.

"You don't think-?"

A trilling, mechanical chime rang through the house, and everyone jumped. Mr Granger smoothed the front of his shirt and strode to the door with an anxious glance over his shoulder at his wife, who had followed a moment after to hastily pin her hair back and fix her hijab in place. She dashed back to sit by Dahlia just as Dan cracked the door open.

"Yes? Can I help you?" he called through the gap, leaving it chained.

"Mr Granger?" a deep, tired voice answered. "Police Officer Richard Henley. We were told by Mr Denson at Marie Curie's that your girls attend a class with Miss Cecilia Carmichael."

Dan undid the chain and opened the door completely, waving the officer and his partner inside.

"Yes, I'm afraid we just saw the live report. Do come in," he invited. "Please excuse our state of dress."

He gestured to their pyjamas and lounge wear.

"I'm afraid we didn't expect to see anyone else this evening."

The television in the sitting room turned off with an electric hum, and Dahlia huddled closer to Safiya's side.

"Not at all, Mr Granger. We're sorry to disturb your family," the officer said, taking off his hat and tucking it under his arm before nodding to the seated women and Hermione, who appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Everyone," Dan said for the officers' benefit. "These are officers Richard Henley and-?"

"Rebecca Baker," the slighter serviceperson said, removing her own hat.

"Officer Rebecca Baker," the dentist finished. "This is my wife, Safiya-"

"How do you do?" she greeted politely, holding out her hand.

"And our daughters, Hermione and Dahlia-"

The girls nodded mutely and mimicked their mother, still pale, scared and more nervous than ever with officers of the law in their decidedly unusual home. Dahlia found herself hoping very fervently the clerk at Flourish & Blotts hadn't been exaggerating about the anti-muggle, cover-freezing charms on all the wizarding volumes the Granger family now owned.

"And please, call me Dan. Come sit down. Would you like any tea?" he asked, leading them to settle opposite the girls.

"No, thanks," Officer Henley answered for them both. "We don't want to keep you long, we just need to conduct a brief interview with the young ladies, if that's all right."

"Of course," Safiya immediately allowed. "Anything we can do to help."

"Thank you."

The officers pulled out leather-bound pads and biros.

"So, first, would you mind confirming how you know Miss Carmichael?"

Dahlia and Hermione exchanged glances, and at seeing her panicked expression, the former answered.

"Both of us have second-hour trigonometry with her," she explained. "We don't really know one another very well - we're both a bit shy and I think she is, too - but normally, we eat lunch at the same time. I've also got a fourth-hour chemistry lab with her, and Hermione shares sixth-hour French."

The police officers scribbled fastidiously before asking their next question.

"Thank you," Baker continued. "And when was the last time you saw Cecilia?"

"Trigonometry," Dahlia and Hermione answered in sync.

"She left really quickly, after," the green-eyed child added. "Some of the other girls were unkind to her, and she was a little upset. We were going to check on her at lunch, but didn't see here there."

Officer Baker nodded gravely and Henley shook his head in disappointment.

"That seems to be the consensus for everyone we've spoken to, unfortunately," he said. "It's been a nightmare. Three kids since Christmas!"

"Please, Officer," Dan said a little sharply at the sight of Safiya's trembling shoulders and tight grip on the girls.

"Very sorry, Ma'am," Henley apologized. "Would there be anything else you might know that could help us, ladies?"

"Oh, um-" Hermione glanced nervously between her parents and Dahlia, rubbing her left forearm. "Well, would you mind waiting a moment? Sometimes we study together and I could go check our notes from the last time to see if anything we were working on jogs my memory. I've got a very good memory."

"Really?" Baker's dark eyebrows rose in surprise. "Of course, Miss Granger. Honestly, anything you can think of might help. We just want to try and find her quickly."

 _Alive_ remained unsaid, but the word weighed on them as if it had been shouted.

"Well, I'll just pop up to my room, then," Hermione said shakily. "Dahli, could you help me?"

She rubbed her left forearm, again, and the girl finally understood.

"Sure," Dahlia casually suggested, her voice only a little higher pitched than normal. "Perhaps you could have a bit of tea or coffee while you wait for us to look through? Mummy makes a really wonderful Turkish coffee, and Dad has a huge collection of teas aside from the usual."

Officer Henley shrugged.

"Oh, go on then," he agreed with an appreciative smile at the adults. "We've got officers out all over checking with your classmates, so I think we can afford a few more minutes."

"Great. We'll be right back!"

The girls rushed upstairs as quietly as they could manage, and Hermione pulled Dahlia into their study and growing magical library.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God-" she breathed, squeezing the younger girl's hands. "Oh, this is bad, Dahli, really, really, really bad!"

"Shh-"

The girls threw a glance at the door and fell silent for a moment, remaining so until the noise of the kettle and low conversation floated up the stairs.

"Slow down. Tell me what you found."

Hermione made an unintelligible noise of distress and pointed to the thin white tome lying on the work table.

 _Tales of the Fae Folk - Separating Truth from Myth_

Dahlia bent over the page, reading rapidly with growing trepidation.

 _Changelings_

 _Many stories have circulated throughout history in both Muggle and Magical literature regarding the Changelings, and it is one topic upon which most resources from both worlds typically agree. By definition, a changeling is a lesser fae creature or construct left in place of a kidnapped infant no older than one year old. In the oldest stories, these often accompanied other tragedies reportedly occurring in the location around the same time as a changeling's placement, and in newer retellings, poems use changelings to describe the postpartum condition that causes fear, paranoia, and despair experienced by some new mothers during a child's infancy._

 _It is unknown whether changelings themselves ever existed by the legendary definition; however, the word holds unique significance for the Wizarding World due to early attempts to integrate muggleborn children into wizarding society at the earliest possible opportunity._

 _In larger communities, a "changeling programme" may have been implemented to prevent drawing undue attention to the other witches and wizards there, and also to protect the children themselves from ongoing witch hunts of the time, as children made up the majority of magical victims._

 _Attempts have been made throughout the years to reinstate a modernised changeling program in an effort to eliminate secrecy risks to the Magical Community and to ensure all magical children receive appropriate care by magical caretakers from infancy. The most recent proposal, brought before the Wizengamot in February 1970, showcased the rising concern for secrecy and security both within and without the Ministry. While it failed to achieve a majority vote, research into the viability of such a programme_ remains ongoing.

 _In the mid 1970s to the early 1980s, the Dark Lord's supporting Death Eaters sometimes referred to muggle-born children as "changelings," arguing they were magical aberrations and a threat against the continuation of wizardkind. Some of the most infamous crimes committed during the Dark Lord's Wizarding War during this period involved the torture and murder of several muggleborn children not yet in attendance at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; however, the practice fell out of popular use within Death Eater ranks due to international pressures and improved security designed to protect the identities of untrained muggleborn children._

To the right of the text lay a black-and-white photograph of a child's bedroom. The image of a crossed sword and wand charred the wall above the bed, bordered by a banner bearing: _In Magicis Sanguinem Prospere_. The message from the telly followed below, written in the same large, Gothic font.

 _Rake out the Red Coals, Madam_

 _For There Your Child Shall Lie_

Dahlia felt sick.

"Oh my God," she breathed. "What do we do?"

Hermione made a high-pitched whinge.

"I don't know! I thought we should call the aurors, but we can't with the police here. They're looking for Cecilia _right now_ , though, and we could help, but we can't tell them about magic-"

The shorter girl clapped a hand over her mouth and thought hard for a moment.

"O.K."

She pushed her glasses up and cast her eyes around the room.

"All of our books have spells on them to keep muggles from noticing the moving photos if they don't already know they're there, right?"

"Yes?"

"So," Dahlia reasoned. "We could say Cecilia mentioned being in a fantasy roleplaying thingy, and that she said she knew one of the other kids from it. That might at least help them, and if they draw attention to this 'fantasy roleplaying game' using certain terms, the Aurors'll definitely get involved."

"And we can go to the Ministry to tell them what's going on and what we think's happening, too!"

They grinned triumphantly, and Hermione pulled _Hogwarts: a History_ from the shelves before leading the way back downstairs. The adults looked up when they entered, and Dahlia tried to smile reassuringly to Mr and Mrs Granger, who both looked extremely concerned by the book they were holding.

"Sorry that took so long," she said blithely as Hermione placed the volume on the coffee table. "We had to find that. The last time we studied with Cecilia, she mentioned participating with that other girl. I can't remember her name, but Cecilia said they were in this fantasy roleplaying club together based around this book. She gave it to me for my birthday."

She waved to the magnificent tome. Its cover illustration moved lazily before their eyes, but the officers seemed to notice nothing amiss about it. Baker flipped it open and grunted with appreciation.

"This is really detailed. Are there other books or items we might be able to find at the Carmichael home?"

"I believe she said they have a standardised library for the organisation as a whole," Hermione said carefully. "So people might have different works, but they'd all be about the same things. Witches, wizards, spell-casting, magic-"

Henley frowned thoughtfully, picking up the book for himself.

"Actually, I think I remember seeing something odd like this in the Porter house," he murmured, making hasty notes. "It read like a cookbook, but it was full of all these made-up potions."

"That sounds right," Dan confirmed, catching on. "If you ask the other parents about the club, they should be able to confirm whether their kids were involved. We had been thinking about letting the girls join. They call it Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Baker nodded and penned it carefully into her notebook.

"Thank you, girls," she said emphatically. "If it turns out the other victim had a connection to this club, too, we might be able to link someone to all three- All four cases. Do you happen to know how to get in contact with the organisers?"

"Ah-" Hermione looked nervously at Dahlia, who came up short.

"Oh!" Safiya grinned. "That invitation they sent you. Just a moment, I'll make a photocopy."

A few minutes later, the police officers left the Granger home with a black-and-white xerox of the Hogwarts return address and the headmaster and headmistress' respective names and titles. They left in much better spirits than when they came, and the Grangers locked the door behind them with no small amount of relief.

"Roleplaying club?" Dan whispered incredulously. "I'm so glad you two take after your mum."

Dahlia blushed at the nonsensical compliment, while Hermione buried herself in her mother's arms.

"If the other kids could be muggleborn, too-" Safiya shuddered. "I think we need to go to London, right away, and speak with the Aurors or see if Tom can help us get in touch with Professor McGonagall."

"Yeah," Dan agreed with a glance at his watch. "I gave the officers our mobile numbers. I'll notify the practice and we can head out."

They seemed to hold a brief conversation reliant entirely upon minute gestures and facial expressions, before Safiya herded the girls up the stairs.

"Come on, let's pack for a couple nights, just in case, and get going," she directed. "And until this is sorted, you two had better wear your wands, even at home. Go on. Don't worry about school. I'll call, and with this being the fourth one in so short a time, I imagine the council will make an emergency temporary closure notice, in any case."

Dahlia and Hermione rushed to their individual rooms and quickly threw on proper outfits, packing away their pyjamas and a couple changes of clothes. Dahlia also tossed her CD player and Lily Evans' driver's license in with the rest, before topping everything off with a couple defense texts she and Hermione had not yet finished. The family gathered in the garage twenty minutes later, each with a small suitcase or overnight bag, and moments later, they left for London. A police blockade stopped them before they got on the M23, but a quick radio to Henley explaining their desire to stay with family in safer areas got them back on the road.

Between the tense quiet and the darkness, the children fell asleep on the drive, but a little under two hours later, they pulled up beside the Leaky Cauldron. Dan helped Safiya and the girls unload their light luggage before driving off to park the car, and the witches led the way into the dingy pub.

Mrs Granger rushed to the counter, where Tom stood reading a copy of the _Prophet_ with thick spectacles.

"Mr Tom-"

"Oh, please just call me Tom, Madam," he grinned gummily and tipped his tophat. "What a pleasure it is to have you back already, Mrs Granger. But what's all this? Are we going on holiday?"

The mother smiled tightly and shook her head.

"I'm afraid not. It's actually a bit of an emergency," she explained in a rush. "We'd like a room for four, if you have one, and we'd very much appreciate some assistance contacting the Aurors or Hogwarts immediately."

He raised a bushy eyebrow, but shrugged.

"Of course, ma'am," he nodded and flicked his wand at their luggage.

The bags and suitcases started floating up the stairs of their own accord, and Tom took two brass keys from a hook behind the bar.

"Here you are, ladies. Room 204, right at the very back, with the big window looking out onto the Alley," he directed. "Floo powder's on the mantle in your room. Secure connection to speak through, but if you want to travel, you'll need to come back down here and use the public grate."

"Er- Floo?" Dahlia echoed.

"Think Father Christmas in a fireplace and a holo-phone all wrapped up in one," Hermione whispered.

"I don't know what a hollow-fone is, but that _is_ how Sinterklass got around back in the day," he chuckled. "Do you need anything else, my dears?"

Safiya looked around at her tired girls and nodded gratefully.

"Oh, I think some tea wouldn't go amiss if it's no trouble. Earl Grey?"

He nodded knowingly and waved his wand at a slate above the taps behind him. The words _Earl Grey Tea Service for Four_ scrolled across its surface briefly before disappearing as if wiped away by an invisible hand. With another word of thanks and a request to send Mr Granger after them, the girls trudged up the narrow, creaking staircase and down an equally grimy corridor carpeted by an old, threadbare runner that may have once been red but had faded a shade of rusty brown.

Room 204 lay at the very end of the corridor across from a stairwell, guarded by a peeling, dirty door with an old-fashioned brass knob and keyhole, and bordered by their neatly stacked luggage. Mrs Granger unlocked the room and waved the girls ahead of her before following with her husband's and her own things, and when she looked up to survey the space, found herself pleasantly surprised.

While the dark wood panelling of the corridor and dining room continued within, it only climbed the walls halfway before ending with decorative moulding. Faded, but handsome blue wallpaper stretched to the ceiling above. Two enormous four-poster beds hung with deep blue, almost black velvet drapes occupied either side of the room, between which a low coffee table and four well-worn, but well-stuffed velvet-upholstered wingbacks sat before a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Diagon Alley. A small fireplace stood in the furthest corner of the room, rising from a knee-high, rounded brick base and topped with a black wooden mantle. A cracked ceramic urn stood on top beside a small sign: _Complementary Floo Powder. Full firecall network access, no entry or exit._ The opposite corner held a large wardrobe, one door of which featured a mercury glass mirror that cheerfully greeted Dahlia when she took her things to that side of the bed. All in all, it kept with the worn Victorian aesthetic common to the Alley, but the accommodations themselves seemed quite nice.

Hermione and Dahlia went about settling in and fixing their tea while Safiya fiddled with the little urn. Dan appeared a moment later, looking a little harried.

"Hermione, refresh my memory, please?" Mrs Granger finally asked.

Her daughter peeked around the back of her chair.

"I think you just open the screen and toss in some powder. It's supposed to turn green, and then you stick your head in and call out the destination."

She eyed the fire uneasily, but tossed some of the iridescent purple substance into the fire. As Hermione described, the dancing orange and yellow flames flashed emerald. Dan stuck a hand into the hearth and laughed.

"It sort of tickles."

Safiya shrugged and leaned over the high step and immediately coughed around a mouthful of ash.

"Ugh!" She cleared her lungs and valiantly forced herself to shout the destination. "Aurors!"

The family watched curiously while Safiya clutched her stomach, then the flames died down to reveal an office on the other side.

"I love magic," Dahlia breathed as a wizard in scarlet robes appeared, blocking out the tidy desks and glass fixtures.

"Auror Dawlish. Name and location?"

"Safiya Granger, Leaky Cauldron," she said in a rush. "There's an emergency. There's a little girl who's been taken."

The wizard started scribbling with a grease pencil in a small journal.

"From the Leaky?" he clarified.

The mother shook her head.

"No, from Crawley, south of London-"

"Crawley's a muggle area, isn't it?" Dawlish frowned. "What's this about?"

Dan edged into view of the fireplace, and Safiya scooted to the side to make room.

"Dan Granger," he said tersely at the wizard's questioning look. "And we'd tell you if you would stop interrupting."

Dawlish bristled and stopped taking notes.

"Now see here-"

"No," Mr Granger snapped. "We have two daughters headed for Hogwarts in September, and I'll not have them become victims, too. One of your lot's running around Crawley kidnapping and murdering muggleborn kids. It's been on the telly for months now, and the police aren't going to stand a chance of finding his latest target-"

"Cecilia Carmichael," Safiya interjected at her husband's pause.

"And she was taken over eight hours ago. The police won't stand a chance of finding her without magic, not until it's too late."

The auror crossed his arms and snorted.

"And how do know it's a wizard, sir?" he said sceptically.

"He's been popping into places without a car, snatching kids, and bringing them back right under people's noses, and he leaves a signature referencing one of your lot's lovely anti-muggleborn traditions," he argued with mounting frustration. "And my girls saw Cecilia do accidental magic, and no one aside from a wizard would care about that. Look, you're wasting time! This kid's only eleven, and that monster's had her for ages. For all we know, he might have dropped her body off, already!"

Dawlish made a quick note and shook his head.

"To be honest, I think you've got it wrong, Mr Granger," he said condescendingly. "We have a detection network set up to monitor major accidental and all underage wanded magic, and no one's called in a report to the reversal squad all day. If the little girl's a witch, her magic would have reacted violently by now to someone trying to hurt her. That would have definitely tipped us off, and nothing you've said convinces me the perpetrator's a wizard."

The parents paused as the auror's words registered, and Hermione frowned at Dahlia. They had been doing magic without issue for months, now, and they trusted Ollivander's word about wands above anyone else's. Safiya and Dan came to the same conclusion.

"But what if she was knocked out before her magic could do anything?" the mother insisted. "If it's a wizard, wouldn't they be able to counter anything she did?"

Dawlish's sandy eyebrows climbed high on his pasty forehead.

"Perhaps, but magic acts odd in kids if they're in danger," he shrugged. "Even when they're out. My boy fell asleep up in a tree and still turned the ground to jelly where he fell, and that's very advanced transfiguration. Besides, we have liaisons in muggle law enforcement precisely for cases like you're describing, and it's all been normal. Worse thing we've seen in the last few months are biting toilets in Yorkshire."

"Biting-?" Dan repeated incredulously. "We're talking about a little girl's life! You can't bother to send someone to just check?! Surely, if you can monitor magic throughout the UK, you can tell if magic's been performed in a fairly non-magical area! And even if it's _not_ a wizard responsible, she's a _child_! What's the matter with you?!"

Dawlish's face purpled.

"Look, I don't appreciate your attitude, sir, and we're disallowed from interfering unless it's clearly a case of magical crime. I'm sorry, but you'll have to rely on your boobies, or whatever they're called," he snapped. "Good evening."

The flames rose again, sparkling green, and the office disappeared, leaving the family gaping.

"Daddy, Cecilia-" Hermione whimpered.

"I KNOW!"

The children flinched, and Safiya reeled on her husband.

"Dan!"

The man rubbed his temples and shot his daughters and wife an apologetic grimace.

"Sorry, loves, just stressed. I didn't mean to shout. All right, let's hope Professor McGonagall bothers to listen," he grumbled, throwing more powder on the fire. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

He groaned loudly and shuddered while Safiya winced sympathetically.

"It's like just your head goes on an amusement park ride," she explained to the girls. "It's really disturbing."

Like before, the flames died down when the correct fireplace connected, and the children gathered around to stare in admiration at an office draped in sumptuous fabrics and lined with books from floor to ceiling. Spindly tables stood here and there, and shining, delicate instruments spun and puffed, trilled and hopped, on every surface. Most remarkably, a gigantic scarlet bird with gold plumage in its wings, tail and crest glided down to look through the fire with its head cocked to the side.

"Er-" Dan stared back at it in confusion. "Hello? Is Professor McGonagall or the headmaster around?"

The bird cocked its head the other way and let out a melodious warble, and moments later, the hem and knees of a royal blue robe came into view.

"Do we have callers, Fawkes?" a playful, but aged voice hummed, before the figure knelt and peered out at them, one hand smoothing his long, waist-length beard to keep it out of the flames.

Half-moon spectacles perched low on a very crooked nose, and electric blue eyes twinkled merrily over them. The man's whiskers twitched as a smile curled his mouth.

"Well, good evening. Who might you be?"

"Ah-" Dan blinked. "Sorry, I'm Dan, Dan Granger, and this is my wife Safiya, and our girls are behind us. Would you be Headmaster Dumbledore?"

"Indeed I am, or at least I was the last time I checked the nameplate on my desk," he said mildly. "What might I do for you fine folk?"

Hermione giggled behind her hand and leaned into her sister's side while their parents explained the situation.

"He looks like Father Christmas," she whispered. "Do you think all older wizards are like that?"

"Definitely not, based on Tom," Dahlia smiled.

"...and it's been so long, sir, we're really worried it may already be too late for Cecilia," Safiya finished tearfully, hands shaking in her husband's grip. "We were worried for Hermione and Dahlia too, so we brought them to the Leaky Cauldron. We tried to tell the aurors, but they said they couldn't get involved in muggle crime, but like we said, we don't think it is."

"Dear me," Dumbledore said gravely, the sparkle gone from his gaze. "I shall have to have a word with Amelia about her night crew about that, but I agree: everything you've described very much sounds like the actions of some of our worst villains. Nothing to fear. I shall gather a few of my staff and depart immediately. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Mum, the roleplaying thing!" Dahlia called.

The old wizard tried to peek over the parents' heads curiously, but there wasn't enough room in front of their tiny fireplace.

"Oh, right," Dan said ruefully. "We thought it might help tip off the wizards and witches working with our police, and since we suspected the kids are all headed to Hogwarts in the fall, the girls told the officers who interviewed us that Cecilia knew one other other victims through a 'fantasy roleplaying club' called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Actually, we gave Officers Henley and Baker a copy of Hermione's envelope, along with your and Professor McGonagall's names. They may try to get in touch."

The headmaster nodded appreciatively.

"That would, indeed, catch our attention, even if you had not taken the initiative to contact me directly," he hummed. "I would award points had your children been sorted, already. In any case, I thank you all for your diligence. Rest assured, we shall act immediately to locate Cecilia and her kidnapper. For your safety, I would recommend remaining in Diagon Alley for now, as it seems the perpetrator's been hunting your neighbourhood."

The Granger family breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Yes, thanks so much, Headmaster," Safiya smiled weakly. "Good evening."

* * *

Liatris - There were two users you may have been, and since your review was so very enthusiastic, I thought I'd answer here. First off, thanks so much for your compliments, and I'm excited to hear you're so engaged in this story.

Most of the answers to your questions would be spoilers, so I'll not address all at the moment, but as to Hermione and Dahlia, their future relationship will definitely cause a bit of drama. Keep in mind, though, before this year, Dahlia never viewed Hermione as her sister or Safiya as her mother (though she would have liked to). To a kid who's been abandoned, that sort of thinking would only lead to more pain in that adult's absence. As much as she craves affection, she's learned to hold herself at an emotional distance.

Hermione has been thinking about Dahlia as a prospective sibling for a while, but she hasn't met her prior to this year, either. There are studies that show kids who spend a lot of time together as infants and young children will develop in such a way they will not view one another as prospective mates, evolutionarily to encourage genetic diversity. Because of both factors, I don't see it being much of an issue between them once they realize how they feel and get used to dealing with the social stigma. Again, though, since the Wizarding world isn't going to really consider the Grangers Dahlia's 'real' family, I don't see that being too bad, either.


	7. Beneath the Bridge

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

A/N: Inspiration for our villain comes directly from Silently Watches' _Faery Heroes_ , which I highly recommend as one of the best written Lunar Harmony time travel fics I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It's full of dark humor and wonderful entertainment from beginning to end.

 _ **All the warnings!**_ \- VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN IN THIS CHAPTER. There will be a point in this installment at which some readers may wish to skip ahead. I will mark the beginning of the scene with a *. There are reasons this story is rated M, after all. If you would rather not read that bit, search in page for the word "depulso" and it'll take you right to the end of bad parts, so you can see the results of what happened but nothing too graphic.

* * *

Chapter Seven: Beneath the Bridge

* * *

The following morning, Mr and Mrs Granger took the girls to finish Dahlia's school shopping simply to occupy their minds with something other than worry. After a very satisfying full English breakfast with perfectly brewed tea, fluffy scones, clotted cream, and Tom's homemade cranberry preserves, the family left the pub for the most imposing building housed on the wizarding street.

Gringotts bank towered over the neighbouring buildings by at least two levels, its white marble facade sparkling even in the dim winter sun. Burnished bronze doors guarded its entrance, beside which stood strange beings wearing scarlet livery and gold-plated armour. They stood almost a head shorter than Dahlia, who knew herself to be one of the smallest girls in her year, and watched them through narrowed, clever eyes set in darkly tanned and pointily bearded face while their long fingers curled subtly tighter about wickedly sharp poleaxes. _Goblins_ , she realized, recalling something about them from one of their many books. The sentries bowed, and the Grangers nodded as they passed. A second set of silver doors came into view, lit by a border of white quartz crystals glowing with soft white light. Beyond lay an airy marble hall with a domed glass ceiling, where yet more goblins in fine pinstriped suits occupied high counters bordering a wide aisle. The back of the hall featured an enormous portrait of a great, graceful dragon with pearlescent skin and shimmering, translucent wings guarding a hoard of gold. It surveyed the bankers and their customers, purple opaline eyes glinting darkly while white smoke curled around its muzzle.

"Good morning-"

Dahlia stopped barely before running into Safiya's back. Beside her, Hermione flashed a teasing smile and went back to staring at everything, herself.

"We would like to open an account for our daughter, Dahlia Evans, and we would like a book of draft papers, please," Safiya continued. "I believe someone mentioned those last time we visited?"

The teller grunted his assent and pushed a form across the counter. The woman politely waved away the goblin's quill, withdrawing a fountain pen from her bag before methodically filling out each line on the stiff parchment.

"Ugh," Dahlia grumbled at the offensive feather resting in its crystal stand. "I suppose I ought to start practicing with one of those things. They're the only implements allowed for exams, right?"

Hermione made an affirmative sound.

"You'll get it quickly. You're a better artist than I am," she said reassuringly. "Anyway, Mummy said she'd set us up with fountain pens for homework and notetaking."

The younger witch shrugged and turned to soak in more of the amazing space. Across the banking floor, a panel in the wall swung open to admit a contingent of goblin guards, all heavily armed. In their midst walked a couple so pale, their skin may have been as translucent as the painted dragon's wings. The man held the woman's hand tucked into his elbow, and both stood so straight and moved with such grace Dahlia could imagine them walking straight from a renaissance-era palace. The witch wore her nearly floor-length, white hair loose, the strands so fine they floated around her with every step, while her husband sported a very thick, snowy beard tied with a satin bow. Their escort marched them quickly out of the bank entirely, while onlookers whispered excitedly in their wake.

"Who do you think that was?" Dan mused aloud, clapping a hand on either of the girls' shoulders.

The goblin snorted.

"They are Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel," he grumbled, handing Safiya a slim pad not unlike a chequebook. "Gringotts Bank's most illustrious patrons. Every time they come in it's a grand hullaballoo for your humans. Utterly ridiculous, nevermind what the fool wizard's 'alchemical brilliance' nearly did to their economy."

He waved them impatiently away and continued to mutter under his breath about the Flamels, and the Grangers departed for Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. A squat witch dressed in mauve greeted them with a wide, dimpling smile and waved the family over to a dressing area behind a set of pale blue, damask curtains. Hermione and Safiya took seats on a a periwinkle velvet loveseat, while Dan retreated to join another father on the other side of the shop, where some merciful soul had arranged both a tea and coffee service, along with several magical and muggle sports periodicals along with the latest copy of _The Daily Prophet_. Dahlia obediently stepped onto the pedestal, stripped off her jumper and dress at Mrs Granger's gesture, and stood very still while a charmed measuring tape leapt to assist Madam Malkin in getting her customer's details.

"Hogwarts, dear?" she asked as she marked the girl's numbers on a notepad affixed to one of the mirrors with grease pencil. "I get the lot of you. Now, I have a few questions for you, if you wouldn't mind humouring me for a moment."

Dahlia shrugged and giggled as the measuring tape flew under her arm, tickling where it touched.

"Enough of that, you," the witch sighed and flicked her wand, and the tool coiled up, returning to a little basket beside the mirrors. "Now, dear, when was your last growth spurt?"

"Er-" Dahlia thought. "A while ago. I was tallest in my year last fall, and now I'm the shortest."

"Got your menses yet?" Madam Malkin asked in a softer voice.

The girl blushed a little.

"No, ma'am."

The woman made a note.

"Better leave you some extra fabric then, so we can let down the hem if you need it at the holidays," she said decisively. "Now, they've _finally_ updated the uniform this year to make them look as smart as those Beauxbatons girls' - thank Merlin."

She smiled.

"So let's get you in a set and we'll have you fitted."

Madam Malkin flicked her wand at the drapes at the back of the dressing nook, and they slid aside to reveal row upon row of black, grey and white garments. One robe, cloak, waistcoat, skirt and blouse flew out from the others to hang on a peg nearby, and the curtain closed again. Madam Malkin helped her into the blouse first, and with prodigious use of sticking charms in the shoulders and sleeves, adjusted everything to fit.

"Now, sizing charms come standard for first through fourth-years," she explained. "And that _should_ tide you over until things start filling out."

Dahlia stepped into a pleated wrap-around skirt with buttons trailing from high waist to hem for Madam Malkin to repeat the process, then slid her arms into a grey wool double-breasted waistcoat with pointed tails. Finally, she helped her into the black over-robes, complete with long, draping sleeves, satin lining, and pointed hood. Madam Malkin fastened it in place with hidden buttons under the satin lapel of the waistcoat, but pointed out the eye-and-loop buttons at waist-level designed to hold it closed in cooler weather. The girl stared at herself in the mirror when she was finished.

"Oh, it's so darling when you girls first see yourselves in proper robes," Madam Malkin gushed, patting her cheek. "I was the same way, you know. Half-blood. Grew up in muggle Cornwall and never wore robes in my life before going to Hogwarts."

She bustled off with the garments a moment later, and the girls wandered after her with their mother in tow to look at jumpers, stockings, and winter cloaks. With the promise of delivery to the Leaky Cauldron, they paid and moved on to visit McKinley & Parker's Portmanteaus, which stood conveniently next door. Potions kit and ingredients followed, then astronomy equipment, and finally, they wound up back in Flourish & Blotts. Dan and Safiya strolled to the scholarly aisles, disappearing among the teetering stacks and towering shelves, and Hermione promptly linked arms with Dahlia, pulling her toward the fictional works on the opposite side of the store. They almost made it to a display featuring a little boy, a magical ship, and a dragon, when a man with wild, dark hair and piercing, icy blue eyes stepped in their path. Dahlia felt his hand clamp down around her bicep and saw recognition bloom over Hermione's face. A horrible hook-like sensation caught her behind the navel, and the world spun blindingly around them. She vaguely registered the landscape changing. Washes of greys and reds gave way to shades of yellow, blue and green. The feel of the air changed slightly, and then her feet slammed hard into the ground.

Dahlia tumbled to her knees and screamed as black cords wrapped around her arms and legs, sending her cheek and shoulder into the dirt. Somewhere behind her, Hermione squeaked. She tried hard to make sense of her surroundings. Damp, cold loam peppered with bits of decomposing leaves obscured most of her vision. She heard the burble of slow water, and she couldn't pick out the sound of anyone aside from herself, her sister and their attacker - no cars, no conversation, not even the flap or call of birds.

"Well," the wizard breathed, breaking the unnatural quiet. "You two made that a lot harder'n it ought ter have been."

The toe of his boot came into view, and Dahlia felt herself float into the air. She tried to twist around, tried to do anything, but her voice wouldn't come, and if she squirmed, the bands pinning her wrists to her sides tightened painfully. She felt her heart race and her vision blur, and she forced herself to take deeper breaths. Levitating off the ground, she could at least make out more of the environment.

Trees stretched up toward the pale blue sky around them, and as she'd guessed, a wide brook lay ahead. An old bridge of narrow, weathered bricks jutted from one bank, ending abruptly in a jagged edge. Shrivelled vines trailed from the overhang into dark, sluggish water below.

"Smart, tellin' them muggles about 'Ogwarts," the wizard said conversationally as they approached a tiny stone cottage tucked beneath the interrupted arch.

The door swung open at a wave of his hand, and then the girls floated one after the other ahead of him in a room far larger than it should have been from the outside. The sharp smell of urine and blood hit her nose, and she gagged violently.

 _In, out-_ she tried to coach herself, switching to breathing through her mouth. _Don't panic. Don't make it easy for him._

"Smart of you ter try them aurors, too, I s'pose."

He flicked his wand, and all the air left her chest as she dropped to the floor. The door shut with a slight rattle behind her. Her vision spun.

"O'course, I wouldn'ta known nuffin' about that if you 'adn't gone blabbin' to them, in the first place," the wizard laughed darkly, rolling Hermione, then Dahlia onto her back with the toe of his boot. "Now-"

He crouched low over Dahlia's face and grasped her chin in a bruising grip. He flicked his wand, and suddenly she could hear the sounds of her rapid breaths again.

"I know 'oo the fuzzy is. Been watchin' 'er fer ages, but I never knew about 'choo," he murmured against her cheek, lewdly rubbing his lips and scruffy chin over her cheek. "So why don't we start nice'n easy, like, and you tell me your name, an' I'll tell you mine?"

 _Keep him talking._

"Dahlia Evans," she forced out. "How did you find us? How did you find the others?"

He smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth. She felt her body moving without her volition to rearrange in a sitting position propped against the wall, and the wizard crouched in front of her.

"Evans, huh?" he made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat as he moved Hermione beside her sister. "M'name's Jack Scabior."

Dahlia felt their shoulders brush, and tried to subtly lean reassuringly into the trembling girl without drawing the wizard's ire.

"Evans," he smirked. "I found you lot the same way them Aurors do. Benefit of workin' inna Depar'ment of Law Enforcement. Ain't I lucky my shift was star'in when your mum an' da called us, eh?"

"You're an Auror?" the green-eyed girl demanded, appalled.

"Maint'nance," the man corrected, rolling up his shirtsleeves, revealing an ugly, faded red tattoo interrupting the pale skin of his inner arm. "No one ever pays attention to the maint'nance people, do they? But I see everyfin' from the Trace maps down to the acciden'al magic reports. Tha's how I found li'l 'Ermione, 'ere."

He cupped Dahlia's face, pushed her glasses up her nose, and lifted her fringe out of the way. The excited gleam in his eyes brightened, and Dahlia felt her stomach clench.

"Now 'ow'd you get this scar, Evans?" he whispered, tracing a dirty fingernail over the lightning bolt. "I only ever seen one thing wha' felt like it."

His fingers dragged over his tattoo almost affectionately.

"Car crash when my mum died."

*He snorted and pointed his wand at Hermione. The silencing spell on her lifted, and the terrified girl gave a sob.

"I think you're lyin," Scabior smiled, and a cut appeared across Hermione's cheek with a flick of his wrist.

She gasped, and Dahlia's heart sped as scarlet droplets beaded in the clean line, pooling together, before sliding rapidly over her chin and into her cream-coloured collar.

"Don't! I'm not lying!" the younger girl cried. "Please, I'll tell you whatever you want, just don't hurt her!"

"Wha?" the wizard's cruel grin widened. "Like this?"

"NO!"

A matching slice opened up on Hermione's other cheek, and Dahlia jerked to the side to knock her over as Scabior raised the weapon again. She half-sprawled over the girl's hip and thigh, and the spell left a shallow scrape in the wall behind her instead.

"Well, ain'choo cute," he mocked. "Come on, now. Tell Jackie the truth. I foun' this in yer bag at the Leaky."

He pulled a laminated card out of his breast pocket, and Dahlia blinked in confusion.

"So? That's my mum. They found that in the car the night she-"

"That," Scabior cut across her impatiently. "Tha's Lily _Po'er_ , is 'oo she is. The woman what stopped the Dark Lord."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" the green-eyed girl shouted.

He stared at her incredulously, shaking his head.

"Hah!" he laughed. "Whaddaya know. They figured the Dark Lord got'choo before yer mum's fancy blood wards 'n curses finished 'im off. Tha,' or the Pettigrew kid took ya and made yer 'is 'ostage in case Black ever caugh' up wiff 'im. You know, tha' Black sunovabitch's paid out 'is arse fer years lookin' fer you. I bet 'is Lordship'll pay a pre'y penny " to 'ave 'is Goddaugh'er back, 'specially after 'e sees wha' 'appened to 'er li'l friend, eh?"

Scabior licked his lips and lifted Dahlia into his arms. She squirmed, but no amount of wriggling stopped him from depositing her on the rough stone workbench built into the wall. He brushed her cheek with his thumb before returning to Hermione.

"In any case, be'er get ter work."

"Leave her alone!" Dahlia cried as he laid the girl on the mouldy wooden table occupying the centre of the room. "Don't touch her!"

He shot an immobilising spell at Hermione, and her eyes widened in fear as the cords binding her disappeared only for cold metal shackles to close around her wrists and ankles, stretching her until she laid spread-eagled, joints protesting and limbs burning with the strain. The wizard released his spell, and she couldn't so much as squirm while he arranged a bundle of knives in the space by her side, placidly ignoring the thrashing, shouting girl behind him.

"TAKE ME!" Dahlia begged. "TAKE ME, LEAVE HER ALONE!"

"Oh, don' worry," the wizard smirked, undoing the buttons of the little witch's coat. "I'm gonna. Ya see, this ain' jus for my en'ertainment, as fun as it is. See, for every muggleborn brat I chop up, I get paid a 'andsome comission in 'donations' by summa my friends."

He picked up a knife, and both girls screamed - Hermione in fear and pain and Dahlia in a combination of the former and fury - as he slowly dragged the blade from the collar of her dress to her bellybutton, cutting deeply and leaving a channel of scarlet in its wake. It bloomed across the soft fabric of her dress and shone against her dark skin as Scabior tore the garment to its hem.

Dahlia felt herself close to hyperventilating. Cold sweat soaked her clothes, and her flesh prickled with goose pimples. The bonds were too tight, too restrictive for her to do more than flop in a horrible parody of a dying fish. She tried to feel her magic, tried to bend more to one side or the other to free one of her wands, but it just felt like the bands squeezed her all the more for her efforts. The air tasted like ozone and felt unnaturally still and cold everywhere it touched.

"I heard tha' Dawlish talkin' to this'un's mum and da, sayin' it couldn'a been a wizard what was takin' them kids. Bloody idiot. Fer gettin' nine Ou'standins on 'is NEWTs, 'e's got the common sense of a bleeding 'ampster," Scabior laughed. "O' course, it's no' like they woulda seen nuffing any damn way. Funny thing, acciden'al magic. It's instinc'ive. Acts weird, unpredic'able. Don' 'appen so much once you star' learnin' 'ow to cast spells. Yer too 'ware of yer magic, is wha' an 'ealer told me once. Once yer star' usin' it on purpose, like, tha' intent star's to focus it. And you two been naugh'y, haven' ya? Even so-"

He gave a sharp jab of his wand, muttered a word, and Hermione's shrill scream filled the shack. It finally faded, leaving only the wizard's sadistic chuckles in its place.

"There're ways ter stop it all together," he explained conversationally. "Take this li'l shack, fer 'xample. I se' it up wiff wards ter suppress magic wha' ain' powered wi' intent. Tricky li'l thing Rookwood came up wiff back in the good ol' days when he were 'sperimentin' on Obscurials."

"P-please," Hermione sobbed. "P-p-please-"

"Please wha', mudblood?" Scabior took the knife to Hermione's chest, making slow, methodical cuts. His mocking tone rose to a shout over the sound of the girls' cries. "Sorry! I can' hear ya too well!"

"JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT! I'LL DO ANYTHING, JUST STOP IT!" Dahlia bellowed, arching off the damp stone, hands curled into claws.

"Aw," the wizard turned to shove her flat to the workbench and pressed a wet, scratchy kiss to her cheek. "I go' wha' I wan' already, luv. I go' a nice new toy over there, an' yer gonna get me enough gold ta tile my bedroom wiff."

 _We're going to die_.

Hermione's screams grew shriller, breaking as her vocal chords gave out, and something inside Dahlia broke, too. Her mind reeled, and she forced herself to think, forced herself to work through the adrenaline and fear clouding her brain. Finally, it latched onto something, and the girl clung to the idea with everything she had. She squeezed her eyes shut, focusing hard, imagining herself holding her wand-

Familiar, warm, lovingly carved wood slapped into her palm. She almost cried.

" _Finite incantatem_ ," she whispered instead, and the bands holding her disappeared.

Before Scabior could lower his wand again or pick up another blade, she bolted up and pointed both wands at his head, flicked her wrists, and shouting the incantation, swept them sharply to the side.

" _FLIPENDO!"_

 _CRACK!_

The wizard's body flew like a ragdoll through the air, toward the wall to Dahlia's right, impacting with incredible force and landing in a heap. She didn't waste a moment. The girl turned to Hermione and pointed at the shackles holding her in place.

" _Alohamora!_ " she cast, to no effect.

"Dahlia," Hermione groaned.

"I'm trying, hold on! _ALOHAMORA!"_

"You li'l cunt," Scabior groaned, pulling himself to his feet.

Blood ran down the side of his face, and a mad gleam lit his pale eyes as he flicked his wand at his left arm, which bent at an unnatural angle. It snapped back into place with a horrible crunching noise, and he sighed, flexing his fingers experimentally.

"I was jus' gonna play wiff you a bit an' ransom you ter Black," he snarled. "Bu' if you really wan' it tha' way - _CRUCIO!"_

Dahlia spun just in time, skin tingling from the near miss, and then she was on the move again, dodging, ducking, rolling while the wizard cast rapid-fire curses at her. She tried to fire back at him when she could, but he was faster, and it was all she could do to stay out of his reach. Hermione struggled on the table in the periphery. The links holding her ground together metallically, the chains too taut to jangle.

"How'd you get free?!" she called as the Dahlia darted behind a rotting set of shelves to avoid a tongue of flames.

"Intent!" Dahlia yelled back.

Left, back, sidestep, quarter-turn- The nimble witch moved with preternatural reflexes in an erratic, dangerous dance to avoid the streaks of coloured light. She twisted to avoid a red beam that scorched the wall behind her, only to feel the air cool rapidly. Her trainer, still turning, lost purchase on a suddenly ice-slicked floor. Her body crashed hard to the ground, jarring her and making her teeth snap together mid-incantation. She tasted blood filling her mouth.

"DAHLIA!"

" _Accio_ ," Scabior gasped, and the two wands flew into his left hand.

He laughed as he stalked forward, breathing hard and baring his horrible yellow teeth in an awful grin. The girl scrambled backward on the floor but could not avoid the heavy foot swinging toward her leg. Pain exploded across her thigh, barely registering before the back of the wizard's right fist snapped her head to the side.

"I though' this'd be so easy," he snarled, kicking her again as she curled in on herself. "I really ough' ter thank you fer givin' me a challenge!"

She couldn't breathe. Any attempt burned her throat and made her ribs twinge sharply. It was all she could do to keep her forearms in front of her face and her knees mostly tucked up against her middle.

" _DEPULSO!"_

Scabior turned at the sound of Hermione's voice, and his eyes widened as one of his own knives buried itself in his side, propelled by the young witch's magic. A strange groan left his lips as his gaze found the hilt sticking from his ribcage. He tried to pull the blade free and level a wand at his attacker, who had slumped to her knees, hands pressed to the freely bleeding wound bisecting her chest. Blood slicked the handle, Scabior's left hand slipped, and the wands clutched between his last two fingers and palm fell from his grip.

Dahlia uncurled at the sound of wood clattering to the floor, and her fingers closed around the aspen rod.

"Ex-" she coughed and winced before taking a deep, agonising breath. " _Expelliarmus!"_

For a second time, the wizard slammed into the wall, and his wand sailed into Dahlia's hand while its owner made a gurgling groan, twitched, then lay utterly still.

"Her- Hermione-"

The battered witch pulled herself to her feet, clinging to the wall for stability, before shuffling to her friend and sister's side.

"Maia?" she tried again, gritting the word through her teeth.

"I-" Hermione swayed. "I think I'm losing too much blood."

Dahlia focused her gaze through her cracked glasses and whimpered. The stain had spread across the creamy shift and outward, nearly reaching its hem. The metallic tang of it hit her nose belatedly, and Dahlia made herself push away from the wall.

"Hold on," she wheezed, easing herself to the ground.

The girl toed off her trainers and, stopping often to catch her breath or wait for her dizziness to fade, shimmied out of her thick cotton stockings. She shoved her feet back into her shoes before smoothing out the stretchy fabric. A cutting charm split them at the seams, then sliced from gusset to waist, forming four long, stretchy lengths not unlike compression bandages.

"I-" Dahlia gasped, holding up one of the strips to Hermione's side. "I think I've got a broken rib. You'll have to help. We have to stop the bleeding."

Hermione nodded weakly but held the end in place while Dahlia pulled it across her back. She took the end and brought it around her front to overlap the original end. They worked in tandem, movements slow and shaky, until they had covered the worst of the long cut. The remaining leg half bound her own ribs after a few more minutes of work. She clenched her teeth through it, tears stinging her cold, dirty cheeks, but when she finished, she could move a little easier. Finally, the girls helped each other to stand and left the shack together, neither sparing a glance for the crumpled body lying within.

Each step felt like it might be Dahlia's last as they picked their way up the bank and through the trees. At some point, the unnatural quiet disappeared, and she thought she heard the _whoosh_ of cars passing very fast in the distance. Then, just as blurred sun reached the horizon, they came across a trail marker.

"We're in Tilgate Wood," Hermione sighed in relief. "We're only a few minutes from home."

"Do you know which way leads to the car park?" Dahlia groaned, clutching her left side with one arm and gesturing at her face with the other. "I can barely see through these."

Sometime in the last hour or so, she'd lost one of her cracked lenses. The result made it impossible to focus, and gave her a headache on top of everything else.

"Yes," Hermione breathed after a moment's thought. "Come on."

Only a few people wandered Tilgate Park during the day, but those few who brought their younger children to the play area or walked their dogs through the neatly groomed lawns noticed the two hobbling, blood-spattered girls almost immediately after they broke the treeline. Everything blurred together then. Someone summoned an ambulance and the police, who arrived in a storm of flashing lights and dark uniforms. Paramedics loaded the girls onto gurneys, and the exhausted children answered questions with vague, robotic responses until somewhere along the way, Dahlia finally succumbed to sleep.

In her dreams, she saw a woman with fiery hair almost to her waist, lots of freckles, vibrant emerald eyes, and a sad smile. Her mother waved a wand over her head, and a plush stag, wolf, and black dog floated into the air to dance around her. They spun faster and faster, lit by a harsh green glow, until Dahlia couldn't see the woman's face anymore. She called to her, running forward, but no matter how she pushed her burning legs, nothing could close the lengthening distance, and then bright light pierced her eyes.

"Ughh."

Dahlia groaned, blinking against the glare while her awareness honed in on the varying types of pain throbbing dully through her ribs. The air smelled of lemony antiseptic, and the white sheets under her hands felt scratchy, foreign. She patted her sides, seeking out pockets, and sat bolt upright when she couldn't find either of her wands.

"Easy there-"

The girl flinched away from the unfamiliar voice, but whoever it was held out a more recognisable blur. She slipped on the proffered glasses, and a woman in a lime green uniform - robes, she realised - came into sharp focus. She leaned over her, casting diagnostics at high speed while her patient surveyed the room, only to find herself alone aside from the healer.

"Where's Hermione?" she asked, panic creeping up the back of her throat and making her mouth taste of acid. "What happened to my sister?"

"Sister?" the nurse frowned. "You mean your little friend? Lots of curly hair?"

"Yes, my _sister_ ," Dahlia snapped. "Where is she?"

"Just fine, dear," the healer soothed, trying to ease her patient back into the pillows. "She was released to her parents earlier today. I think they're all still waiting for you to wake up."

The girl processed this for a moment and shook her head disbelievingly.

"Well, can I be released to them, too?"

The witch, _Healer Fennick_ , according to the silver tag on her breast, pursed her lips.

"I'm sorry, but that's not possible."

Dahlia's hands fisted in the sheets.

"Why not?" she bit out. "I want to be with the Grangers."

"Dear, I don't think you understand what's-"

Whatever she was meant to understand didn't matter very much to Dahlia right then, though. She had just been through a near-death experience, and the strange witch making shifty expressions at every mention of her family had pushed her straight into an adrenalin-fuelled tizzy.

"MUUUUUMMMMM!" she shouted. "MUMMY!"

She heard a bang from the other side of the door, and raised voices made it through the wood.

"Ma'am, you can't-"

"That's my girl in there," Safiya Granger's voice insisted. "She needs me, and you've no right to stop me!"

"Mrs Granger, she's not your-"

"DON'T YOU DARE!" the usually soft-spoken woman screeched. "MOVE OUT OF MY BLOODY WAY OR I SWEAR, I'LL MAKE YOU, MAGIC OR NO!"

The door slammed open after a momentary pause, and Safiya flew to Dahlia's bedside, pushing the healer out of the way to gather the sobbing girl into her arms.

"Oh, my love, I have you," she choked, stroking Dahlia's messy black waves and rocking her back and forth. "I've got you."

The young witch realized she was babbling into the woman's shoulder, but couldn't recall when she'd started.

"I'm sorry," she blubbered. "He grabbed us before we knew what was happening and I-"

"Shh, shh. I know, sweetheart," Safiya soothed, wiping her daughter's tears away with the pads of her thumbs. "You're fine. You did everything right."

Dahlia couldn't stop the flood of words, however.

"-and there was so much blood and-" she gasped. "HERMIONE! Where's Hermione?"

"She's just fine, darling," Mrs Granger assured her. "She's just outside. They fixed her up, good as new."

The woman gave a watery smile.

"Better than good, actually," she joked weakly. "The cheeky little thing convinced her medic to fix her front teeth."

The girl slumped with relief, then tensed as a severe-looking wizard stormed into the room, wand in hand.

"Now see here, Mrs Granger," he tersely napped. "You can't go around shouting at the orderlies for doing their jobs! You're not allowed to be in here without Miss Potter's guardian's say-so."

"I am _Miss Evans'_ legal mother," Safiya argued fiercely, holding the girl tighter. "I drill holes in people's teeth for a living, and I could kill you with a syringe and an air bubble. Just try and make me leave!"

"I'm afraid I'll have to insist, ma'am, if you won't listen to reason."

He raised the wand at the furious dentist, and Dahlia's frayed nerves snapped violently. The healer's focus jerked from his grasp and shot into the ceiling like an arrow, embedding itself, and a food cart passing the open door slammed into his legs, sending him to the floor. Lumpy porridge splattered the tile, and the china shattered.

"What the blazes is going on here?!"

A fairly young man with curling black, shoulder-length hair, fine robes, and finer features appeared in the doorway to stare incredulously at the upended wizard and the wide-eyed nurse huddled in the corner.

"Argh!" the wizard on the floor groaned as he tried to detangle his lime green robes from the cart's wheels. "This blasted-! Mr Black, I was simply trying to explain to Mrs Granger she's not to be in here without your presence until the inquiry's over, and-"

"Is _that_ what this is all about?" Mr Black pinched the bridge of his nose and expelled a long sigh. "Go away, Healer Smith."

"B-but-"

"Are you really that thick?!" the exasperated wizard snarled. "Did you even bother talking to her about what's happened? You know what? I don't care. Out. Get out! You, too-"

He reeled on Healer Fennick.

"And tell those thrice-damned orderlies the Grangers can go wherever the hell they want, as far as I'm bloody well concerned!"

She made an indignant sound, but scuttled away quickly enough with her colleague on her heels. Mr Black sighed again before turning a tight smile on the woman and her daughter.

"Sorry about that," he said sincerely. "They mean well, but stupid's catching, and there's a lot of stupidity going around in this building."

"And who are you exactly?" Safiya asked tersely. " And why do those people seem to think you would want to deny me access to my daughter?"

His face saddened drastically, forming lines in the corners of his eyes.

"Because of this," he said, pulling a laminated card from his pocket.

"That's mine," Dahlia said softly, accepting her mother's yellowed, bent driver's license.

Her thumb slid over the smiling face framed by long, red hair, smoothing a new crease in the material. Black ran a hand through his hair and flicked his wand at the mess still littering the floor. As Dahlia watched, the food vanished and the porcelain fused back together before stacking neatly on the righted cart. The wizard made it roll over to the wall, then conjured a chair much softer-looking than the straight-backed affair occupying the opposite corner of the room.

"Can I ask how you got it?" he queried gently, taking a seat and leaning toward her with his chin propped up on his clasped hands, elbows on his knees.

Dahlia curled closer into Safiya's embrace and forced herself to breathe more deeply while the woman rubbed soothing circles over her back. She examined the wizard's tired, chiselled face uncertainly, but finally gave a wary answer.

"The firefighters got it from the car, after it crashed," she said softly.

Whatever the wizard had expected, the girl could tell _that_ hadn't been on his list of possibilities. His dark eyebrows pulled together, and he seemed to struggle to form his next question.

"How… Er-" he frowned. "What happened in the crash?"

She couldn't understand what he wanted from her. Her response came out a bit snippish in her frustration.

"The police report said they thought mum fell asleep at the wheel. She hit a tree, banged her head and died. My car seat was thrown from the back windscreen."

Mr Black expelled a long breath and scrubbed his hands over his face before leaning back and crossing an ankle over his knee.

"On October 31st, 1981, a terrorist called Voldemort attacked a home in Godric's Hollow, just south of Brecon."

Dahlia felt her hands start to shake. She and Hermione had read about the last hundred years of British wizarding history at Safiya's suggestion, just to bring them up to speed on cultural developments they would not have been exposed to. She had read in depth about the Potter family. The woman's name had caught her eye, and she had wondered if the way the books described The-Witch-Who-Won might have also described Lily Evans, the young, single mother who died in a car crash early on November 1st: brilliant, talented, well-loved by her community, vivacious-

Then she remembered how odd she had thought the lack of photos in the books or news articles. There had been plenty of James Potter, but his wife seemed startlingly absent from the visual record.

"He was able to do this because the person entrusted with guarding the secret of the Potters' location betrayed them, allowing him access to James, Lily, and their baby. He killed James, first, then tried to finish the job upstairs," he explained hoarsely, his eyes shining. "The aurors still aren't entirely positive what happened, then, but between them, Albus Dumbledore, and the cursebreakers, it was determined that Lily, knowing Voldemort would come for her child, set a trap for him. She built a very ancient, powerful set of wards into the property, and she created a ritual circle with herself as the focus and her baby as the catalyst. When she confronted Voldemort, and he killed her, he initiated the ritual. Lily's magic - her life force - charged the enchantment. When Voldemort attacked the baby, the catalyst, he fulfilled the conditions of the ritual, and was destroyed. We always thought-"

He swallowed around a catch in his throat and stared at the ceiling, blinking away the signs of his distress before continuing.

"They always thought something went wrong, because all the runework carved into the nursery should have protected you, but there were these scorch marks in front of the crib, dark stuff tied to Voldemort. Everyone thought they must have interfered, that you-"

Black buried his face in his hands, shoulders trembling.

"I looked for you everywhere," he wept. "For years. I hired private investigators on the muggle end and paid every wizard who had the slightest skill in tracking to bring you home. I didn't want to believe it. I could feel you, still-"

He clutched at his chest.

"I thought that fucking traitor must have taken you as a hostage to protect himself from us, or to offer something to the leftovers from Voldemort's lot, but then the Aurors finally caught up to him, and when they searched the place he'd been hiding, there wasn't any sign of you."

Black shook his head and swiped his sleeve across his face. Dahlia felt something wet on her cheek and looked up to find Safiya crying, sympathetic grief for a pain she knew too well written across her features.

"I… I put the nickname name your mum and dad called you on their headstone. I never got to learn your proper one for myself. Your parents were so stubborn. Made me guess, and I must have peeved your mum, because she dressed you up like a boy fairly often. I suppose I thought I'd be better with a boy."

He laughed weakly and ran a trembling hand through his hair, combing it away from his blotchy face.

"My birth certificate and hospital records were in the diaper bag they found with me," Dahlia insisted shakily. "It said where I was born, and had Lily Elizabeth Evans listed as the only parent. She was there, in the car. They autopsied her and made a positive identity with her fingerprints."

She couldn't understand. It just couldn't be possible.

The wizard shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know how you ended up in that car, or who was driving it, but I swear, I'm telling you the truth," he said more steadily. "I can prove it. I've got pictures of you. We could do a paternity test, too. They've got James' blood profile on record, somewhere, because he was allergic to dittany. I just wanted to ask you before I had them do that. Or, if you prefer, you've got an aunt on your mum's side I wouldn't mind sticking with something sharp and pointy, if you want to have it done the muggle way."

Dahlia looked to Safiya, but she just pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"It's up to you, dear. You'll always be my daughter."

The girl slowly straightened and met Mr Black's watery but hopeful gaze. She took a deep breath and tucked her hair behind one ear.

"What happens if it says I'm who you think I am?" she asked.

The wizard grinned.

"You get a rakishly handsome godfather with extremely deep pockets and no idea what the word 'spoilt' means," his teasing expression softened. " _And_ who loves and misses you very much."

She pursed her lips.

"You wouldn't take me away?"

Black shook his head, but the corners of his eyes drooped a little.

"I'd never make you do something you didn't want to," he insisted gently. "But I would like to visit and get to know you, if that'd be all right with your mum."

Dahlia swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and nodded.

"I'll do it," she said with far more confidence than she felt. "I've wanted to know about my birth parents for a long time. If it's true… If it's true, I think I'd like to get to know you, too, if you wouldn't mind telling me about them."

"Anything you want, Prongslet," he smiled, stood like he was going to hug her but thought better of it, and dashed to the door. "Just wait there a moment."

Safiya sniffled when his footsteps faded and swiped at her wet cheeks before releasing her hold on Dahlia's slim shoulders to hold her hands, instead. She tried to focus on the sound of her breathing and the warmth encompassing her fingers instead of the storm of feelings and thoughts competing for first billing in her head.

"Mum?" she asked in a small voice.

Mrs Granger beamed at her. She still struggled with calling her that after years of addressing her by her name.

"Yes, love?"

"Did you happen to get me a change of clothes?" she picked at the front of her hospital-issue pyjamas. "These are a little itchy."

"Oh, of course!" Safiya smiled and pressed another kiss to the girl's brow. "I'll fetch them for you."

She tucked the covers around Dahlia's sides before making her way to the door, only to pause in the jamb.

"I should probably explain what's going on to Hermione and Daddy, too," she added with a rueful smile. "They've both been worried sick. I'll be right back."

The woman closed the door quietly behind her, and Dahlia slumped back onto her pillows. A deep ache shot through her side, and she immediately regretted that decision. She wondered idly how the healers had fixed what she felt sure was at least one broken rib.

True to her word, Safiya returned only a few minutes later with her overnight bag slung over her shoulder and a tray of steaming food in her hands. The scent of cooked beef and buttery potatoes filled her nose, making her stomach grumble loudly.

"How long was I out?" she asked as Mrs Granger arranged the tray on the side table and began pulling clothes out of the floral canvas rucksack.

She laid out a clean pair of heather grey, cotton stockings, a lemon-yellow skirt both Safiya and Hermione insisted looked adorable with her colouring, and a light grey, oversized pullover with the _Dark Side of the Moon_ cover illustration screen-printed on front. Dahlia shucked off the itchy, restrictive-feeling pyjamas and dressed quickly despite the lingering soreness, tied back her hair in a messy ponytail, and tucked into her food without a care in the world for manners. Safiya winced, but didn't comment, choosing instead to make up the bed, fold the discarded sleepwear, and retake her seat at its foot. Her possible godfather arrived a moment later with a completely new healer and a shabbily robed man with sandy, silver-peppered hair behind him. The room started to feel very cramped as they arranged themselves around her: the sandy-haired stranger in the corner on the straight-backed, wooden chair, Black in his handsome conjured armchair, and the healer on her left with wand in hand.

"Hello, Dahlia," she smiled, and the expression lit up her whole face. "I'm Healer Bhatia, and I'm going to test your blood against James Potter's profile."

The round-faced woman pulled a wooden box from the pocket of her robes and opened it, revealing a full-sized stand holding one empty phial and one filled with dark red liquid. She charmed it to hover in the air at her side before turning again to her patient.

"Now, this won't hurt at all, but it might feel a little cold from the numbing charm. Just stick out your arm for me-"

She complied, and the witch pressed the tip of her wand to the inside of Dahlia's elbow. A strange sensation engulfed the patch of skin touching the wood, and the air above it condensed, making a wispy white cloud that rapidly disappeared as soon as the healer lifted the wand away. A ribbon of wetly shining red came away with it, coalescing in an amorphous bubble around the end of the wand before stretching out to pour into the empty phial. Dahlia watched, amazed, as a tiny cut on the inside of her arm sealed without leaving any indication it had been there at all.

"That's amazing," she breathed. "Did you learn how to do that at Hogwarts, or are there universities or something?"

Healer Bhatia grinned again.

"Apprenticeship," she said, tapping the floating apparatus.

Golden, shimmery light glowed beneath the bottom of the phials for a second, and the blood started bubbling as if heated to boiling.

"You can learn a basic skin-knitting spell in charms at Hogwarts, though. I believe they show you one for basic first-aid in first or second year, if I'm remembering correctly."

She paused as the bubbling stopped and the blood seemed to lighten, the color leaching out of it like watching ink swirling in milk, but in reverse. The remaining fluid then darkened again, becoming a deep, royal blue.

Mr Black beamed.

"Positive," she chirped, vanishing the contents of Dahlia's vial and closing up the case. "Welcome back, Miss Potter."

The wand dangling from the ceiling came loose with a shower of plaster dust, hit the floor with a clatter, and shot a cloud of confetti into the air.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading, and please take a minute to review if you've got the time. Your feedback really helps me improve, and knowing you're engaged keeps me posting more often.


	8. The Last Potter

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Eight: The Last Potter

* * *

Sirius Black could barely hold back his relief and excitement at Healer Bhatia's pronouncement, but could tell an enormous hug might not go over so well from the stiffness of Dahlia's tense little shoulders, so he settled for embracing Remus for all he was worth and crying unabashedly into the other man's shoulder. His head eventually caught up with his emotions, though, and he realised with a start he had not actually given Mrs Granger or his goddaughter a proper introduction as of yet.

"I'm so glad you're all right," he finally said to the tired, but tentatively happy-looking girl. "And before I forget again, please call me Sirius. This here-"

He nodded toward a beaming Remus.

"Is Remus Lupin, my best friend in the world aside from your dad. He was with me when St Mungos called. You can't imagine how I felt when they told us you were here, and then we arrived and you were all purple and blue-"

A flash of fury hardened his voice, but he forced the feeling away. She was safe and well, and the man responsible taken care of, already. His words seemed to jolt Dahlia out of her own thoughts, though, and she sent an anxious glance at her mother when she thought she couldn't see.

"Actually, I'm not really too clear on what happened after we made it out of the park," she admitted. "The last thing I remember was being in a muggle ambulance, and then I was here."

"I can answer that."

Everyone turned to the door, where a man with twinkling blue eyes and a long, waist-length, silvery beard stood placidly observing the people within.

"Albus," Sirius grinned. "I take it you've heard?"

"Indeed, I have," the headmaster smiled. "Good morning, Mrs Granger, and Dahlia, it is a pleasure to meet you face-to-face."

"Good morning," she mumbled back. "So what happened?"

"Ah," he shrugged. "I may have poked the hornet's nest, so to speak, after your parents reached out to me the night before last. I ensured all our partners within muggle emergency response services knew to look out for signs of magic and anything relating in the least to Cecilia Carmichael's case."

His gaze lost its sparkle, and his long whiskers twitched into a sad frown.

"I'm afraid we were too late for her, but I was determined to make it so another could not happen, again," he gravely intoned. "Imagine my dismay when we arrived at Jack Scabior's little hideaway and realised the perpetrator had been watching for signs of detection within the halls of our own law enforcement offices. I apologize for not thinking, sooner, that you might be in direct danger. Your mother told me you were taken from Diagon Alley?"

"Yes, sir," she confirmed, shuddering a little at the sound of the wizard's name.

Safiya's hand tightened around hers.

"Is he… Did we-" her voice broke, and she forced herself to swallow and try again. "What happened to him?"

The adults shifted uncomfortably in reaction to the question. Safiya began smoothing her hand over Dahlia's hair, and her godfather and his friend both looked angry. Dumbledore's shoulders drooped.

"I want you to understand, Dahlia, that what occurred was not the fault of you or your sister. You only did what you had to in order to survive, and you should be commended both for your bravery, and for your resourcefulness in escaping," he gently reassured her. "Scabior passed before Aurors arrived on site. An examination of his and your wands revealed a rough sketch of the day's events, and Hermione confirmed our findings when she woke."

"So it's really over?" she asked after a short pause.

"Unequivocally," Dumbledore confirmed. "All that remains is for you to be released into the Grangers' care, once more, and, if you would allow me, Mrs Granger, I would very much like to set up some protections around your home. I'm afraid news of your daughter's survival and return to the wizarding world has already reached the press, and I worry you may receive some unwanted attention, otherwise."

"Surely they're not allowed to print her name without our permission?" Safiya interjected. "She's not of age."

The headmaster shook his head.

"Unfortunately, my dear, I'll think you'll find nothing but headaches if you pursue the issue. The Potter family's sacrifice immortalised them forever in the minds of wizards everywhere, even beyond Britain's shores, and their role in the war itself made them something of celebrities before that," he explained a little ruefully. "Not to mention, the Potter name holds a seat in the Wizengamot. Like in your own law, news about public figures is considered to be the right of the people to know, regardless of age, so long as that information is not obtained illegally. Libellous reports, of course, can be countered, but I'm afraid there's nothing to be done about the attention at the moment."

He turned another twinkling smile on the young witch.

"Better now, though, I think, than when you start at Hogwarts. With any luck, the hullaballoo will die down before you arrive. In the meantime, you may get a few owls and interview requests."

At that, the headmaster rummaged in one of his sleeves to withdraw a parchment envelope printed with emerald green ink.

"And speaking of owls, I thought I might save one the trip and present this to you a little early."

A grin broke over Dahlia's pale face at the sight of her name in the glimmering, looping script.

 _Miss D. A. E. Potter_

 _The Northmost Bedroom_

 _12 Tinsley Lane_

 _Crawley_

 _..._

"I still can't get over the inclusion of her bedroom location. It really is creepy," Dan commented as he tucked the letter into his breast pocket and went back to watching the headmaster, Sirius and a young man called Weasley while they paced off the edges of their property. The shabbily dressed wizard named Remus hung back, walking the pavement in front of the home and muttering spells under his breath designed, he'd been told, to keep other muggles from noticing anything odd about the place.

He grinned again at the sight of the dark-haired man's leather jacket, jeans and band t-shirt. The father felt fairly certain they, at least, would get along just fine. Dumbledore's choice of 'muggle fashion,' however, featured a three piece plum velvet suit and pointy boots straight from the 70s and inspired only amusement in the dentist. The man had yet to draw a conclusion on the redheaded lad with his ponytail and fanged earring. On the one hand, he had the elder gentlemen's assurances Weasley possessed the latest and most powerful techniques in warding, which he understood to be the magical, invisible version of security systems. On the other, he very much embodied the faceless, badboy types featured in his worst nightmares about his girls growing up.

Professor Dumbledore smiled and looked up from his wand-waving. The rocks floating from the earth at his feet continued swirling despite his apparent inattention, coalescing into a larger granite stone.

"Despite all my years as headmaster, I've never quite figured out how to make the roster omit that," he begrudgingly admitted. "It's caused Minerva innumerable headaches, as you might imagine."

"You don't know how close I got to calling the police when Professor McGonagall showed up on Hermione's birthday," Dan agreed, shaking his head. "If it weren't for her turning the coffee table into a pig..."

The men chuckled, and Hermione frowned from her seat on the front step beside Dahlia, who hadn't spoken much since they arrived home and refused to leave her sister's side.

"Whyever would one need to turn a coffee table into a pig, anyway?" she asked innocently. "I didn't see a satisfactory explanation in _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_. It doesn't seem very practical."

"You would be surprised," Dumbledore hummed, carving deep, angular gouges into the stone. "The greeks transfigured bits of wood into pigs for their armies' use against war elephants, back in the day, to prevent soldiers from burning their livestock alive."

Hermione's face crumpled at that.

"You mean they'd use _real_ pigs?!" she gasped and shuddered. "That's barbaric!"

"Many wizards were of the same opinion," the professor agreed. "Thus, transfigured pigs. Really, though, the practice is as an exercise in transfiguring animated, life-like constructs from inanimate materials. The larger the construct, the more complicated. It is also an intermediary study on the bath to learning the art of transfiguring creatures into inanimate objects and back again without causing the creatures harm, or in more advanced lessons, the art of temporarily transfiguring one creature to another."

Dahlia perked up at that.

"Like people?" she asked softly.

The adults all looked at her curiously.

"Only, sometimes I dream about a stag that turns into a man and back again."

Sirius' face lit up, and the headmaster's eyes twinkled brightly.

"Indeed, but what you specifically refer to is known as an animagus transformation. Now, _that_ is the epitome of the study of transfiguration," he said with a smile for the dark-haired man. "It's very difficult, as it is a learned ability to transform at will, without a wand, into a specific creature. Only true masters achieve the transformation under normal circumstances. James Potter, however, was an especially talented student and highly motivated, and learned to shift into a stag at…?"

"Fifteen," Remus and Sirius said in tandem, a wistful note to their voices.

"Would you like to see a practical demonstration?" Sirius added.

Dahlia and Hermione smiled brightly, and the former nodded. A moment later, both girls squealed as the wizard bounded toward them in the form of an enormous black dog, tongue lolling out of his huge mouth and tail wagging like a propeller. He crouched playfully and yipped at them, then sat more docilely to allow the girls to scratch behind his ears.

"Idiot," the sandy-haired wizard muttered fondly as the animagus engaged Dahlia and Hermione in a game of tag.

Their laughs and shrieks filled the air after scant moments, and Dan grinned at the sight of his girls smiling so broadly. It soothed like nothing else, after the nightmare of the last twenty-four hours.

"Thank you, Mr Granger," Lupin said more softly, pausing by the father while the children ran past, the dog close on their heels. "For allowing him to have a part in Dahlia's life. He's… He wasn't the same after that day. This is the happiest I've seen him, since."

"Call me Dan," he reminded the wizard before nodding to the kitchen window, where Safiya's heart-shaped face flashed in and out of view every few moments. "It'd be wrong to deny him. Safiya lost two babies before Hermione, and her little brother-"

He cleared his throat and gave Remus a sad smile.

"Trust me, while we couldn't understand the loss of your friends, we're far too familiar with _that_ particular pain," he murmured. "Besides, for all she calls us 'mum' and 'dad,' now, I know Dahlia's always wanted to know about her birth parents. She always figured her dad was some deadbeat, since he wasn't on the birth certificate."

Lupin grimaced.

"Actually," Dumbledore spoke over the girls' squeals, which had risen in volume with the animagus' excited play. "I would very much like to discuss the nature of Dahlia's disappearance from Godric's Hollow now, if you have the time, Daniel."

"Of course," Dan graciously agreed. "Safiya worked at Dahli's children's home before we adopted her, so she'll have the most details, but we've got her documents on file in the study, whenever you're ready."

"William?" the velvet-clad old educator called to the redheaded wizard in the back garden.

The gate swung open, and Weasley strolled out, casting charms over his his clothes to rid them of dirt.

"Yes, Professor?"

"Now, I've told you you're welcome to call me Albus, dear boy. I haven't been your professor for years," Dumbledore chided. "How far along are we?"

"Done, except for charging," he said confidently, holding up a cloudy quartz plaque the size of a dinner plate. "We just need to stick this somewhere inside and have Lord Black activate the rune scheme."

"Excellent work."

The bearded wizard's cornerstone embedded buried itself until only a small, flat section appeared above the damp soil, almost obscured by the violets blooming around it.

"Sirius-"

The wizard-turned-dog skid to a stop, rose on its haunches, and blurred, shifting into a wizard again in under a second.

"Right," he smiled. "C'mon, Grangers. I'll show you how this works."

Dan held the door open for the others, and Dahlia and Hermione preceded them into the foyer, toeing off their shoes and putting them up in the closet before leading the way into the sitting room, where Safiya had already laid out a platter of sandwiches and sat with a mug of steaming coffee. The girls went to sit by her, and she tucked them against her sides with a relieved smile.

The wizards watched bemusedly while Dumbledore stepped out of his boots and tucked them into the closet as well before following his example to gather around the coffee table and the inviting spread.

"We've got tea, coffee, cakes and sandwiches for everyone," Safiya invited as the men, save Dumbledore and Sirius, took seats.

Bill and Remus tucked in enthusiastically, while the headmaster and dark-haired wizard examined the room with critical eyes.

"Would you mind if we moved this photograph?" Dumbledore finally asked, gesturing to one of the frames beside the fireplace. "This would be an ideal place for the keystone."

"Of course," Dan agreed, hopping up to take the picture from its fixture. "So, how's this all work?"

William glanced up and swallowed hastily before launching into an abbreviated explanation.

"Professor-" he paused at the old wizard's pout. "Er- _Albus_ is going to charge the wards, since he's the most powerful wizard here, and Sirius is going to smear some blood into the runes and act as the anchor so he can raise some family wards, too. After that, we'll tie you lot to it - another small blood donation - and then, Dahlia and Hermione will be tied to the control runes, so if there's ever an emergency, they can call for help and raise the active defenses."

"I suppose we wouldn't be able to control anything?" Mrs Granger queried with a small frown.

Weasley exchanged a look with the headmaster, who looked pensive for a moment.

"I think we could work something up," he mused, glancing over the muggle couple appraisingly. "Yes, that'd do nicely. May I see your wedding bands?"

Dan's brows rose, and he held up his left hand in surprise, nodding at the handsome gold signet ring on his third finger.

"What, this?"

"Oh, yeah, that'd be perfect," Bill agreed, taking Safiya's diamond ring, too. "Just a tic-"

The young cursebreaker drew a large magnifying glass from the pocket of his duster and charmed the rings to float over the table, then adjusted his grip on his wand to hold it like a quill near its end. He worked for several minutes while the others looked on or returned to their food before passing the jewelry to Dumbledore for inspection.

"Very good," he praised. "Now, if you would please hold out your arms, William will take a small amount of blood while I do my own part."

Dan, Safiya, Hermione and Dahlia obligingly rolled up their sleeves while the wizened professor turned back to the wall and affixed the plaque to the blank space left behind by the photograph. He pressed his wand to its surface, and with a murmured incantation, the runes carved there began to glow with almost blinding light. A similar sheen beamed through the windows facing the garden and front lawn, persisting for several seconds until the headmaster lowered his focus. The runes gleamed gold in the stone. Sirius sliced open his left palm with a bit of a wince, then began daubing the scarlet fluid into the grooves. Dahlia looked away, her stomach twisting at the faint metallic smell. Hermione interlaced their fingers over Safiya's lap.

The wardstone seemed to drink the blood until no trace remained, and finally, Bill spelled their collective donation around the rings before directing it into the runes, too. The wedding bands returned to their respective owners unblemished, and with a final twist of Sirius' wand, the plaque stopped glowing, and the wizard's hand healed without a mark.

"That should do it," he smiled. "Well done, everybody."

"Yes, well done, indeed," Albus agreed, turning to the cursebreaker. "William, I'm sure Sirius will wire you the appropriate fee for Gringotts' official services. If there's nothing else..?"

The young man took the dismissal for what it was and smiled, shoving another sandwich into his mouth before shaking the Granger parents' and the other wizards' hands.

"Thanks so much for your help, Bill," Safiya smiled at him.

He grinned and shrugged.

"Just my job, ma'am. Pleasure to meet you all, especially you two, Miss Evans, Miss Granger."

With that, he returned to the foyer and disappeared with a _crack!_ of displaced air, and the sitting room settled into a decidedly more sombre mood as everyone took seats again.

"So, Dahlia," Professor Dumbledore gently prompted. "Would you mind telling me how you came to be with the Grangers? In detail, if you would, as best as you know things."

A very long and somewhat painful hour followed, dotted by gentle probing on the headmaster's part and a few interjections by Safiya from Dahlia's file, in which the professor's bland expression never faltered while the others went through a wide range of emotions: sadness at the story of her placement with children's services after the inexplicable car crash, anger and horror at the series of failed foster attempts and life in the system, and bittersweet happiness at her fortitude and eventual adoption by the kind dentists and their daughter. Even the Grangers weren't immune. It was one thing to have read the information noted in the girl's records, but another entirely to hear the depth of her struggle with her magic as it related to her life. Despite its length and accuracy, however, Dahlia's tale seemed only to create more questions for the wizards.

"I'm very sorry you had to go through all you have, Dahlia," Dumbledore softly murmured. "You must be a very strong, very gifted girl, indeed to have overcome so much in so little time. I still wonder, though, _how_ it came to pass, at all."

"Is it possible emergency responders got to her before your lot?" Dan suggested in reference to Godric's Hollow, but the wizard shook his head before he finished.

"There were very strong wards around that area to keep muggles away. Only a wizard would have been able to take you, and yet, the only wizards who knew of your existence at the time are all accounted for, as far as I'm aware. Remus was out of the country supporting the war effort. Sirius arrived first on scene and called in the Aurors when you could not be found, and we later found Peter Pettigrew-"

Both Remus and Sirius made expressions and sounds of extreme dislike at the name.

"Was not conscious at the time of your kidnapping, shortly before Sirius' arrival. Then there are these documents."

He gestured to file on the coffee table with a frown before crossing his knees and taking a long sip of his tea.

"I can't understand what purpose was served by removing you from the wizarding world and staging Lily's death as a muggle affair," he sighed.

"Does it matter?" Dahlia asked tiredly, leaning heavily against her mother's side. "I'm here now. You've found me. I don't understand why it's important."

Sirius rubbed his forehead and leaned forward to pat her knee gently.

"You're probably right, pup, but if whoever did it is still around, we need to know. They may have meant you harm, and they might still be out there," he explained. "That's why we decided to use Black family protections on top of the blood wards Albus wove. Your mum and dad were famous, and you'd be incredibly important as a political asset to some wizards, if nothing else. There's an empty seat in the Wizengamot with your name on it, and legally, if you had a magical guardian, they'd be able to vote in your place until you reach your majority."

Remus shook his head.

"I don't think whoever did this wanted to use her, Padfoot," he disagreed softly. "And the average pureblood wouldn't have known enough to make it look like an accident or create a golem accurate enough to fool muggle forensics."

Safiya and Dan glanced at him appreciatively. They had been thinking along the same lines.

Dahlia's head hurt.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm really tired. Is it all right if i just go up to bed?"

"Of course, my dear," Dumbledore said softly. "My apologies if I've added to your worries. Daniel and Safiya-?"

"Please, do stay," Safiya invited even as the woman rose to accompany her daughter up the stairs. "We wanted to speak a bit more about what we might need to do to help with the inquiry and everything else."

"That can wait," Dahlia heard Sirius assure her parents halfway up the stairs. "The girls are my priority, so whatever they need comes first."

"I think I'll go to bed, too," Hermione said.

A short while later, Safiya tucked both her daughters into Hermione's bed and pressed kisses to their faces. They clutched one another's hands under the coverlet, falling into fitful sleep beneath the watchful eye of their mother, who curled up in the rocking chair tucked into the reading nook opposite. She remained for hours, happy to leave things to Dan and the wizards downstairs while she guarded her girls.

* * *

May ended in a flurry of activity. Hermione and Dahlia returned to school with the Crawley Kidnapper officially arrested and sent to 'maximum security holding facilities to await trial'. Their days passed much as they had before: class, homework, self-defense lessons, and spellcasting practice, which Remus and Sirius were too eager to join in Dan's place.

With the house officially warded against detection by muggles and registered at the Ministry of Magic as a residence of Sirius Black, they were free to use magic as they pleased. As an added benefit, Sirius had enough expertise the girls could comfortably try their hand at transfiguration and potion-brewing beneath his supervision, and by the start of August, they had devoured what little remained of their first year texts and had started working on perfecting technique.

More than anything else, however, the girls found themselves absorbed in the fallout following the highly publicised demise of their kidnapper and Dahlia's return to the wizarding world as The Last Potter.

Dahlia thought the headmaster must be an optimist in the extreme for amounting the potential post to 'a few owls,' because from the moment they left St Mungos, she found herself bombarded. It quickly got to the point the Grangers, with Sirius' enthusiastic help, rerouted everything through a owlpost centre. In addition to inexplicable fan mail, she saw her face splashed across the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ daily, and felt incredibly uncomfortable with both the limied truth and prevalent supposition printed in the animated periodical.

Following her release from St Mungos, a special edition went out across Britain featuring a photo of her very bruised, swollen face beside an image of Sirius Black slumped in a St Mungos waiting room chair. The newspaper met her at breakfast, abandoned on the kitchen table by Safiya and Dan, who had retreated to the study before her arrival to commiserate behind closed doors in terse whispers about what to do about the entire affair.

Opposite the pictures of herself and her newfound godfather, she found a shot of Jack Scabior, grinning from what appeared to be a photo taken at a holiday party. The accompanying article made her feel not a little ill. Nowhere were any of the other kids or Hermione mentioned. The writer made it out to sound like Scabior had been holding her prisoner since her infancy, made lewd suggestions about what might have taken place, and the language they used hinted she had broken free by use of some unknown superpower. It never explicitly explained any of these suppositions, used extremely vague language to describe the timing of everything, and went on to throw aspersions on her mental stability. Another issue ran that evening, depicting her family as they left St Mungos with Sirius, Remus, and Professor Dumbledore. Again, the Grangers weren't mentioned despite appearing in the photograph.

The entire affair thoroughly disturbed Safiya and infuriated Dan. Sirius and Remus did what they could to minimise the press exposure, but as September 1st drew near, it become obvious the _Prophet_ would print every bizarre theory its writers could invent until someone volunteered truer information.

After a lot of debating within the Granger household and a long, serious talk between Dahlia and Hermione, Sirius arranged a press conference to address the main points of contention hotly discussed throughout wizarding Britain: how Dahlia had disappeared, and her feelings on her experience with Scabior. They scheduled the thing to take place in the Ministry of Magic atrium in front of a gold fountain featuring a centaur, wizard, witch and elf, in full view of thousands of glossy office windows overhead, and with over a hundred members of the public and press in audience.

The soon-to-be-eleven-year-old fidgeted with the fabric of her forest green skirt, which bisected a loose, soft, cream-coloured shirt printed with little foxes. Sirius had given her robes of darker green to go over top, seated under the collar of her shirt and belted at her waist. Hermione dressed similarly, but in a dusky blush-coloured dress covered in thousands of minute roses and a deep purple robe. Her family and Sirius stood behind her, clothed in more subdued tones coordinated to make the girls stand out from them. The press seemed to appreciate the contrast they created, and several flashes went off before the girls approached the microphone on stage.

"Er- Good morning," Dahlia said, wincing when the magically enhanced device still managed to produce piercing feedback. "Thank you so much for joining my family and me today. They're the reason I'm speaking with you, and we hope to clear up a lot of confusion we've been reading in the news. First, we'd like to address our experience regarding the Scabior case, and then my godfather, Sirius Black, will answer any other questions you may have."

She swallowed nervously, but proceeded when Hermione's hand found hers.

"This past May, my adoptive sister, Hermione Granger, and I-" she ushered the girl forward, and bright flashes went off everywhere. "Were kidnapped from Flourish & Blotts while shopping with our mum and dad, Safiya and Daniel Granger."

The adults stepped up on cue to put supporting hands on the girls' shoulders. She paused, and the sound of excited chatter and scratching quills filled the space.

"But before Jack Scabior took us, he brutally tortured and butchered four other children," Hermione chimed in, and Dahlia quickly arranged their photographs of the other victims, whose names and faces had finally been released to the muggle press with their parents' permission for memorial purposes in Crawley.

 _There_ , at least, the girls were left in peace, as the cause of their injuries had been put down as a rabid dog attack, and because the testimony they'd given to the paramedics and police had been wiped by Obliviators before they could record any of it.

"Elizabeth Mayhough was eleven years old. She sung choir in church, and she liked listening to Beethoven's sonatas," Hermione said as Dahlia held up the first photograph. "She wanted to be a Hufflepuff, and she was the first witch in her family. Edward Phillips-"

They displayed a picture of a smiling boy in a grass-stained football kit.

"Ten years old. Eddie played forward for his football club. His great uncle, a muggleborn wizard who passed shortly before his nepphew, told his parents he would have made a fantastic chaser for whatever house he got into."

The ministry officials in the audience had begun looking decidedly uncomfortable, and many of their number seemed shocked and appalled at their new revelations.

"Ken Yamato just turned twelve. He and his family moved here from Japan three years ago. His favourite flavour ice cream was chocolate, and he was really excited to learn about potions."

Only one photo remained, and Hermione's voice cracked.

"Ce-Cecilia-"

Dahlia passed her the photograph of the shyly smiling girl with mousy brown hair, sad eyes, and a pink alice band.

"Cecilia Carmichael shared a maths class with us," she said for her sister. " She was an only child, and she was an amazing writer. We didn't know her very well, but we wanted to talk to her the day she disappeared, because we saw her do accidental magic and wanted to get to know her better since we'd be first-years together, but we never got the opportunity. She was eleven when Jack Scabior took her from our school."

The girl looked out at the audience whose upturned faces seemed a blur of colour and emotion. She found the mothers by their teary eyes and the fathers by their quiet horror. One man with dark hair and a hooked nose, standing far off to the side of the rest of the audience, seemed particularly disturbed. The press, she identified by their rabidly scratching quills and the purple smoke billowing over their heads with every camera flash.

She could tell the crowd as a whole was losing its composure, confronted by the names and faces of the other children's stories. Safiya had been right when they discussed it days before: the wizarding public couldn't see a name printed in ink as more than a concept. They couldn't mourn an idea, even if that idea represented a kid.

"Because of our age, our mum and dad spent a lot of time following these kidnapping and murder cases," she continued. "The day Cecelia disappeared, we learned the killer left a signature in the rooms of kids he'd taken. ' _In Magicis Sanguinem Prospere,'_ she quoted. If that sounds familiar to you, it's because you, like we, have seen the words before, in an entry about the Death Eaters' campaign against children they nick-named Changelings."

Hermione raised a large print of the symbol and its banner, the ominous couplet beneath clearly legible, earning reactions of shock and fear from the majority of the crowd. The blinding flashbulbs cast spots of colour dancing across their vision, and the reporters began calling out questions over the growing noise.

"The moment we saw it, we knew the kidnapper couldn't be a muggle. Our parents brought us to London to floo the Aurors on duty to warn him a wizard was murdering muggleborn children, and another had just been taken," she said louder to be heard over sounds of denial from several ministry workers. "Our concerns were dismissed."

"Our classmate Cecelia died shortly thereafter," Dahlia added around a catch in her throat. "Eight months-"

Hermione held up the photographs of the other children again, and the script Dahlia had carefully memorised over the last two weeks evaporated. Sirius and Safiya had planned for her to say something about how she felt sure there would be changes made to prevent such a thing happening, again, but with every one of the indignant reactions within the crowd, she felt herself get angrier.

Auror Dawlish hadn't listened. The system they had supposedly set up to prevent wizarding crimes against muggles hadn't worked, and Hermione had suffered for it. _She_ had suffered for it. Cecelia had died scant miles away from her mother's house, and the woman would never know the truth about why it happened. What reason did Mrs Carmichael have to reach out to the magical world when her only tie to it had perished at the end of a knife? How would she know to do so when the Aurors had obliviated the knowledge of her daughter's magic from her mind.

Dahlia crumpled the small notecard clutched in her left hand and gently nudged Hermione away from the microphone. The girl slipped her fingers into her sister's. She felt her parents shift nervously behind her, and Sirius stepped a little closer on their right.

She never felt gladder for mandatory public speech classes.

"For eight months, Jack Scabior terrorized our home with torture and death. For eight months, we - myself, my sister, and the other kids of Crawley - were left in the hands of a mad wizard who, I can tell you from personal experience, had no qualms about using knives and cruciatus curses on kids," she bit out, voice trembling from the effort of reining in volume. "I don't know why some people think we deserve the attention that's been given us. We were lucky enough to make it back to our mum and dad."

Hermione was crying beside her, and she felt her sinuses stinging. Safiya's hand felt tight on her shoulder.

"There are seven people who will never see their children again, and two kids who have to grow up without a brother or sister. Those with no other magical relatives don't even remember their kids were magical, won't ever know the truth about why they were taken. I hoped Ministry and public concern would have fallen by now to investigating how Scabior got away with his killing spree for those eight months," Dahlia accused. "Based on the reaction we received from the Auror on duty, and the inaction of the wizards and witches posted within muggle law enforcement, I can only think perhaps the Ministry doesn't care about muggleborn kids like my sister, or kids like me, who have roots in both worlds. I would very much like to be wrong, though. Please, Minister Fudge and members of the Wizengamot-"

She called attention to the pinstriped wizard sitting amid a row of chairs to the left of the stage, where he, a few legislators, and their staff sat. Fudge's eyes widened and his mouth opened and closed several times. The lime-green bowler hat he had been spinning in his hands fell to the floor, and the woman in overwhelmingly pink robes beside him scowled. The others watched with varying levels of surprise, horror and discomfort. Dahlia stared them down, her knees trembling as she clutched the microphone and Hermione's fingers.

"Please prove me wrong. Please show me you're as angry, as sad, as horrified as we are. Make sure you find who paid Jack Scabior incentives, and try and persecute them under the full extent of the law. Then, make sure no one else can be made to suffer the way Cecilia, Elizabeth, Eddie and Ken did. Please, don't let anyone else wake up from nightmares of her sister's screams every night because you could have done something, but failed to pay attention."

She didn't bother to wipe away the moisture on her cheeks, but felt extremely grateful when she felt Sirius at her elbow.

"Thank you."

Chaos.

While her godfather took the microphone, the Granger family, guarded by Remus, left the stage and made their way quickly to one of the many tall fireplaces lining the atrium's polished walls. Flashbulbs and shouts followed them from the moment they alighted from the short stairs.

"Miss Potter, do you feel the ministry was negligent in this case?"

"Mr and Mrs Granger, how does it feel to be raising a hero to the wizarding public?"

"Miss Granger, tell us about your experience-"

"How did you survive-"

"Which of you killed Scabior?"

Remus snarled a warning to the reporters converging on them, and a moment later, a shimmering shield pushed them back. Safiya nudged her forward, and Dahlia gladly stepped into the emerald flames.

"Padfoot's Place!"

Despite having spent the better part of the summer flooing to and from her godfather's flat in London, she never got used to the sensation of spinning through what she was convinced must be a separate dimension. She squeezed her eyes shut against stinging soot and warm, rushing air, keeping her elbows tucked tightly against her sides and her knees slightly bent. Like always, the destination met her before she was ready, and she tumbled onto the flagstones. Her knees hit the cushioning charm either Sirius or Remus had installed at some point, and she pulled herself to her feet just before Hermione shot out behind her.

" _Turgeo."_

The soot Dahlia had been valiantly trying to wipe from her glasses and face disappeared with a soft suctioning sound, and she sent a grateful smile at her sister as she cast the charm at herself.

The adults followed shortly thereafter, Sirius last of all and thirty minutes later than the others, who had settled in with coffee, tea and butterbeer in his absence, and the family spent the better part of the afternoon reviewing the press conference.

"I say you pretty well threw down the gauntlet," Remus commented wryly, casting detection spells and removing tracking charms while he spoke.

They didn't work at the flat or the Granger house, but the wizards made a habit of checking everyone for them after public appearances after an especially tenacious _Prophet_ correspondent attempted to intercept the family following Hermione's end-of-term ballet recital.

"I'm not sure whether we ought to have coached you at all, considering how well you handled yourselves. Umbridge looked positively apoplectic."

Dan grinned at that and winked at his girls, ever the proud parent.

"We'll need to keep an eye on her," Sirius sighed, hunched over a writing desk in the corner and scratching away on a notepad. "She's got a penchant for getting her way, and Fudge isn't pleased by having the blame laid so firmly at the ministry's feet, no matter how true it is."

On that happy note, the family settled in for an early lunch before Safiya and Dan departed for home, and the girls looked to their godfather and de facto uncle while they prepared for yet another hurdle in Dahlia's reintroduction to the wizarding world as a Potter: meeting the family.

They had agreed it was enough to worry about between getting to know Sirius and Remus and dealing with the Scabior fiasco without adding the stress of meeting previously unknown members of the extended Potter-Black family, so they had put it off until the end of the summer. Dan had suggested knocking it out in one day might shorten the recovery period after emotionally taxing experiences. Safiya had argued Dahlia would need more time between confrontations, if she chose to have them, at all.

Remus, ever the intermediary, had recommended Dahlia herself choose, but Dahlia felt fairly certain she chose wrong after the last hour.

"So," Sirius smiled after changing out of his suit and robes and into his more customary blue jeans, band shirt, and leather jacket. "To Longbottom Hall, or Privet Drive?"

The green-eyed girl made a face, to which Hermione responded with a hug.

"Are you sure we should see the Dursleys at all?" Dahlia suggested."If Lily's muggle records weren't altered, the police would have gotten in touch with them, already."

"We're not sure how much was changed when whoever took you did what they did," Sirius hedged, biting back his own grimace.

He met the Dursleys at the Potters' wedding, and he very much did not want to expose Dahlia to potential rejection at the hands of the great walrus he remembered or the cold, stoic woman with none of Evans' charm or kindness. At the same time, he remembered Lily mentioning a desire to reconcile with her older sister after her very public break with Snape, and he had begrudgingly admitted Petunia may not even know her sister had died.

After an already emotional day, however, he hoped his brilliant, brave, stubborn goddaughter chose the easier route.

"I guess we should get it over with," she said dully. "If it turns out well, we only have a little while to get to know the them before school starts. We'll be in classes with Neville, so we've got loads of time to get to know him, even if we don't see him today."

 _Bollocks._

"Well then," Remus said a little tiredly. "I had better clear out, myself, and take care of a couple errands."

Dahlia's huge green eyes turned to him, full of anxiety and trepidation. It astounded him how quickly she and the Grangers had adopted him after their reunion, especially after such an ordeal. He had told the dentists about his condition in the interest of full disclosure, but like Lily, they considered him a victim of horrible luck and even pointed him in the direction of some muggle assistive services to help him find work that would accommodate his illness. Despite his worries, the girls hadn't cared, either.

"I'm following up a lead I hadn't considered before," he explained with an apologetic smile. "Something I saw at the press conference. Pads'll take care of you, and if they're awful, we can always get them back, later."

"Muggle-baiting is illegal," Hermione reminded him primly, tucking her wand into a skirt pocket. "It wouldn't be right to use magic on them, even if they're positively horrid."

Her sister pouted, and the robes she had been conducting to the closet with a hovering charm flopped to the ground.

"Well, what about non-magical payback?" she countered, continuing the spell with her other wand with a steadier hand. "Couldn't we, I dunno, cut one of their television cables or something?"

Remus said something that made Hermione scold him and Dahlia laugh, but he was already halfway out the door and turning to apparate before the door clicked shut.

* * *

Spinner's End, a narrow, crooked street in a town called Cokeworth, bore the marks of declining industry, underprivileged families, and too little sunshine. No one noticed when a man with sandy hair, numerous scars, and faded, well-worn clothes quietly appeared in a tiny alley between two houses whose only other occupants consisted of a dented aluminum bin and a skinny squirrel. He left the shadows to stroll down the street. Boards covered most of the windows Remus passed, and bits of glass from broken bottles or shattered street lamps crunched frequently underfoot.

The wizard had to breathe through his mouth as he made his way toward the narrow house on the end of the street to avoid gagging on the stench emanating from the polluted, refuse-strewn river several blocks away, so when he arrived at the last house on Spinner's End, it was with a pinched face and a somewhat sour mood. The flaking door opened before he could knock.

"Lupin."

The man peeking through the narrow crack snarled the word like a curse. Moony resisted the urge to react to the potion master's hostility and chose, instead, to take the small opening between the door and its jamb as an encouraging sign. At least it hadn't been slammed in his face, or else, his knock ignored entirely.

"Snape," Remus answered evenly. "I hoped you might have a moment to discuss something that's been bothering me."

The professor's thin lips curled in an ugly grimace.

"Far be it from me to deny an old classmate a moment, never mind enjoying my exceedingly rare time off," he sneered. "I must warn you, though, if this is about Wolfsbane, I assure you that despite the vast difference in our socioeconomic status, I do not make a habit of purchasing such such costly ingredients when their uses are so sorely limited."

Moony sighed and crossed his arms in front of his chest, forcing himself not to shove them into his pockets, as he was wont to do. The former Death Eater likely would not take kindly to such a gesture.

"Dahlia Astraea Evans," he enunciated carefully. "I saw you in the crowd, today. You know, Sirius and I have been confounded in figuring out who took her the night James and Lily died, and only one of my theories seems likely, at this point."

Snape shut the door sharply, leaving Remus standing on his front step, listening to the other man's slow, even breaths on the other side of the thin wood. He waited, and a full minute later, the unmistakable scrape of the bolt sliding back sounded dully, and the portal swung open with a high-pitched squeak.

"If you are here, I take it you've finally reached the same conclusion as our illustrious headmaster. I shouldn't be surprised it took this long. I might credit Black as the stupidest man to have ever lived, but that would be a compliment to that fool Pettigrew."

Remus looked around the tiny sitting room with unguarded curiosity. Bookshelves covered every available inch of vertical space from each wall to racks affixed behind doors. He spied a tinier kitchen through an archway, and a narrow stair leading up to what he presumed would be equally small, glum sleeping quarters, and perhaps a lavatory.

"That's what I don't understand," Moony finally murmured, taking a seat uninvited. "Pettigrew was never clever enough to hide her so well, but why would you, of all people, do it? To get back at Sirius? He's a berk and an idiot, but I never thought you the sadistic sort. He loves that kid more than he's ever loved anyone."

Snape considered his caller with an expression leaning more towards exhaustion than any real contempt, but managed to wrap every utterance with disdain, anyway.

"If that idiot, as you call him, can be loyal, whyever would you assume _I_ , of all people, could not?" he sneered.

"Dumbledore told you to kidnap her?!"

The spy's raised eyebrow and pursed lip immediately made him feel foolish for drawing the conclusion, not to mention leaping from his seat.

"I have only ever been loyal to one person, I assure you," he murmured, every soft syllable a subtle dare and threat wrapped up in one. "But just to reassure you, and your… Alpha-"

He smirked at Remus's flush.

"Let's play a game of supposition, shall we?"

Snape leaned forward to pick up a squat tumbler full of amber liquid and crossed his knees, the picture of ease. When it became apparent he would not offer anything further without his guest's participation, Remus gave an impatient gesture.

"Suppose there is an evil so powerful, the infamously resourceful and brilliant Unspeakable Lily Evans cannot drown, burn, suffocate, or disintegrate it," he drawled. "And then, suppose that equally powerful force for good, a force who feels responsible for many lives, learns of a way not only to capture its attention, but, with luck, end it completely."

The careworn wizard swallowed hard, ears pricking at the sound of Snape's accelerated heartbeat, his sensitive nose scenting perspiration.

"Then, consider: Whyever would the Dark Lord, the most dangerous wizard since Grindelwald, cease his grand schemes to pursue an infant?" he suggested. "What could possibly motivate such drastic and focused action? Having decided to do such a thing, why choose two particular magical children out of thousands here and abroad?"

Remus's hands clenched on the arms of his chair as the implications piled up.

"Finally, what would you do with that knowledge?" Snape whispered after taking a long draft of his whiskey.

A bit of steam curled from his nose at his next exhale as a side-effect of the liquor, surrounding him in a cloud for several seconds before it and its spicy fragrance dissipated in the sour air. When the werewolf still said nothing, the potions master continued on, each word pronounced more coolly than the last, each one laced with special loathing.

"The pieces move into place. The black king falls, his body broken, his blood stilled and magic extinguished, and yet-" Snape's nimble fingers loosed the row of tiny buttons holding closed his left sleeve from elbow to wrist, and the ugly, faded, but still visible red scar shone in the dim light. "He still has a heartbeat."

"Oh Lord-"

Remus's scruffy face greyed precipitously at the sight of the dark mark. He had witnessed Scabior's arm, and his own tattoo had paled almost to nothing before he saw the man in St Mungos' morgue. It had been a faint outline, just a pink smear almost indiscernible from the rest of his flesh. This alone might not have convinced some men, but the wizard claimed other talents, and he could _smell_ the taint clinging to the cursed thing. It was not a scent one quickly forgot.

"You know as well as I, without the White King backing my word, the idiot dog would do precisely the opposite of anything I might suggest," Snape said darkly, downing the remainder of his drink. "Better, think on what the mongrel may have done if someone he trusted, Hagrid, perhaps, took his sole responsibility off his hands in the interest of freeing his wand for more violent pursuits."

He lifted his empty glass, tilting it to watch the last bead of amber swirl slowly around the inside.

"Then, who would remain?" the sallow, sneering, miserable wizard fixed Remus's pale green eyes with a hard stare.

The werewolf swallowed heavily around the lump in his throat.

"You're accusing Dumbledore of orchestrating-" he shook his head. "Of trying to- That's impossible."

Snape's tumbler sailed through the air to shatter behind him against the grimy, scratched wood floor.

"Who the hell knows?" he snarled. "If you knew what I did, would you have taken the chance? Could you have left that child in a wizard's hands if you had the slightest doubt about his involvement with your closest friend's death? Lily-"

His voice broke around the name.

"I didn't know whether it was Pettigrew or Black, but I knew what Albus had and hadn't done in regards to my deal with him. He failed in his part of our bargain. Some promises run deeper."

He eyed his palm, where a white, jagged scar followed his lifeline from the heel of his hand, curving above his thumb.

"For everything that happened between Lily and I, I couldn't bear the possibility of seeing her child raised by her harpy sister and her filthy husband. I couldn't take the chance she might bear scars like mine."

Remus stood shakily. His chair screeched unpleasantly over the floor.

"You're lying," he whispered. "Albus knew I was trustworthy. He would have put her with me, or Alice-"

The potions master breathed a bitter laugh.

"Believe as you wish, mongrel. Maybe I just couldn't stand the idea of seeing her in your claws. You might have forgotten yourself and gone for a midnight snack."

"Fuck you, Snape," Lupin growled, pacing to the door. "And stay the hell away from Dahlia."

He slammed the door behind him, leaving the wood to rattle in his wake as he twisted on the doorstep.

* * *

A/N: I had this chapter slated for next Wednesday, but unfortunately, I'll be driving out of state for a funeral. Chapter Nine will post sometime during the first week of March, after we get back, and between now and then I hope to finish Eleven, but fair warning, my muse has been a bit shy with everything going on.

Please take a moment to let me know what you think, if you've got a minute to review. When I'm stuck, there's nothing more encouraging than seeing y'all are engaged.


	9. Summer's End

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Nine: Summer's End

* * *

Dahlia stared at Number 4, Privet Drive with no small amount of trepidation, while inside, a family, _her_ blood relatives, went about what the Dursleys would call a perfectly normal (and, therefore, positively perfect) Saturday. The movement of shadows behind the lacy hangings in the kitchen window suggested Petunia Dursley occupied herself with cooking or dishes - the sort of kitchen-based homemaking she prided herself in - with the expertise of one with far too many subscriptions to periodicals on the subject and too much time on her hands. The open window overlooking the driveway yielded Dudley Dursley's occasional indignant shouts or the jubilantly-delivered verbal abuse particular to a person reinforcing his feeling of superiority over far weaker opponents (in this case, pixelated rabbits on a glowing screen). Similarly, Vernon Dursley lounged in a very large, very expensive reclining armchair in front of a similarly proportioned television, shouting identical invective at the football players darting across the field.

Sirius Black, who stood quietly behind his goddaughter, knew them to be the sort of people who did not hold with any nonsense, which in their definition, included: strange circumstances, odd behaviour, variance in sexuality, unique or sloppy dress, loud music, motorcycles, progressive ideology, an abnormal regard for one's fellow human being, or, most of all, anything to do with magic.

He did not, however, impart this knowledge to the slender eleven-year-old, as she had experienced enough difficulty for the morning. As much as he thought this a very bad idea, he refused to add to her worries. Rather, he resigned himself to dealing with the fallout, whatever that may be.

"You don't have to," Hermione said softly, taking the shorter girl's hand, uncurling it from its anxious fist and soothing the nail marks left in her palm.

"I think my mum would have wanted me to at least try," Dahlia mumbled.

Despite the volume and tone of her delivery, however, her back straightened and she marched up to Number 4's front door to depress the glowing, round button framed at eye level to its left. The sound of heeled shoes on wood followed, and the door swung open a moment later to reveal an extremely thin woman with a very long, slender neck, wispy blonde hair coiffed with enough hairspray to withstand a hurricane, large, horsey teeth, and a pale lavender house dress reminiscent of 1950s television. Her thin mouth pulled into a practiced smile at the sight of the well-dressed little girl on her doorstep.

"Can I help-"

Dahlia met her gaze, Petunia Dursley's face paled several shades, and her hand flew to her chest at the sight of the girl's large, emerald, almond-shaped eyes.

"I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am," Dahlia said politely, her voice trembling a little. "But I just learned about my mum, Lily Evans, very recently, and the- Er-" she stumbled as her brain blanked over the explanation they had constructed specifically for this visit. "Er- the social worker told me my mother had a sister named Petunia, whom I was informed lives here. Would you- Would you happen to be my aunt, ma'am?"

"You-" Mrs Dursley gasped. "You're- You can't be-"

Dahlia felt her heart sink at the horror on the woman's face.

"'Pet? Who's at the door?" a deep, gruff voice grunted within.

Mrs Dursley seemed to recover at the sound of her husband's voice.

"I-" she breathed, trembling violently. "I don't know who you've been speaking to, but I don't know what you're talking about. Good morning."

The woman moved to close the door, but a little foot clad in a shiny black shoe shot into the jamb before it could swing shut, and Hermione peered up at Mrs Dursley with an intense, searching gaze.

"Don't you what to know what happened to Lily?" she demanded. "Your sister's a war hero! She died, and your _niece_ grew up not knowing anything about her. Don't you think you should at least speak to her properly?"

Petunia blinked rapidly, and the pallor faded from her face, replaced by an ugly shade of red as her gaze found Sirius standing behind them. She didn't recognize the second girl, but she remembered him _._

It was hard to forget a man who turned into a dog and bit one's husband during her sister's wedding reception. Vernon had needed stitches and still bore the scar.

"I know exactly what happened to my freak sister," she spat venomously.

She turned her hateful gaze on Dahlia.

"She married that good-for-nothing and got herself mixed up with those- Those hooligans! It's her own fault if it caught up to her. And-"

Her voice lowered to a hiss.

"I can only say I'm glad the authorities had the sense to keep you away from me and my family if you're anything like her! I don't want anything to do with you unnatural hellspawn."

Hermione removed her foot from the door just before it slammed shut, and the brass _4_ affixed above the peephole sprung loose and swung, upside down, in the girls' faces.

"That- that horrid-!" Hermione gasped. "YOU'RE A HORRIBLE PERSON!"

She screamed the last as loud as she could to be head through the wood and over the noise of the television inside, causing several neighbours to peek out of their own windows and doors to stare at number four's visitors curiously.

"Come on," Sirius whispered, pulling Dahlia to his side and pressing a kiss to her crown.

Her skinny arms wrapped around his waist, and the man bit back some choice words of his own as Hermione took his left hand.

"Let's get out of here."

They walked casually to the end of the block and into an empty alley, where they disappeared with a loud _CRACK!_ without anyone the wiser.

* * *

"I'm sorry you've had such an awful morning," Neville said sympathetically with a shy smile to his godsister. "You're terribly brave to say all that stuff to the Ministry. I read about it in the afternoon edition."

"Well done, I say," Madam Longbottom, the boy's formidable grandmother. "Fudge is an imbecile on the best of days. He was due for a good tongue-lashing."

Despite her intimidating demeanour, Dahlia thought she quite liked the Dowager Lady Longbottom. She had met them at the door of their beautiful country manor, taken one look at Sirius and the girls' faces, ushered them rapidly into the beautifully appointed solarium at the rear of the house, directed them to sit with her surprised grandson, and served up a platter of fresh-baked biscuits with sweet lavender lemonade.

Wizards, apparently, loved lavender, and she wholly approved of the floral note on top of the tart citrus, with her tea, in ice cream and pastry glaze. She wondered whether wizards had a grocery store she might visit.

Hermione smiled impishly back at the matron while Dahlia bit into another delicate confection.

"I was a bit distracted at the time, but looking back on things, their faces were pretty funny," she confessed. "That Umbridge woman looked like she'd swallowed an enormous fly."

Sirius, who had kicked off his boots, tossed his jacket somewhere, and rolled up the legs of his jeans to enjoy the warmth and sunshine, snorted loudly at that.

"She always looks like that," he assured her. "But I agree with Gussie. It's been a shite morning, but you girls have accomplished more than a lot of people do in a year. I can't remember the last time someone lit a fire under the ministry's collective arse, like that aside from me."

"Language!" Hermione scolded. "I'll tell mum."

He pouted with all the grace and maturity they had come to expect from the young lord.

The rest of the visit almost made up for the truly terrible turn their morning had taken. Neville, a shy boy talented in areas not normally credited to his gender, according to Augusta, showed enormous interest in the girls' description of muggle school, particularly in biology. Too much detail seemed to overwhelm him, but by the end of the visit, he asked Hermione if he could borrow a basic text to read into the subject a little more.

He, in turn, shared his love of herbology. Both Hermione and Dahlia listened intently while he took them through Longbottom Hall's gardens, which had expanded considerably beneath his mother's care during her lifetime. Combining her prodigious skill with charms and plants, she created greenhouses overflowing with thousands of sweetly scented and rare blooms. Neville pointed out his favourites, but also took the time to explain the properties of each plant he liked or the girls asked after. Finally, they ended up beside a beautiful pond overlooked by an enormous, enchanted wisteria tree. Its drooping branches skimmed the water in places, creating glassy ripples through which tiny fish shone in the sunlight. Lilac petals fell all around them, many dusting the marble slab nestled amidst the tree's overgrown tangle of roots.

They sat in the cool grass in silence for a long while, staring out onto the water and enjoying the late afternoon breeze, before either of the girls noticed the words simply engraved in the stone.

"Neville?" Dahlia asked, stroking her fingers over Alice's name.

Sirius had told her Neville's mum had also been her godmother, but he hadn't been very forthcoming.

"Mm?"

"Are these your mum and dad?" She asked gently.

Hermione's hair bounced about her face as she whipped around to stare at the boy in clear concern.

"Yeah," he admitted shyly. "Sorry. We can go back in, if it makes you uncomfortable. It's just sort of habit for me to come down here."

"No, I like it," Dahlia quickly reassured him. "So long as we're not butting in on your privacy or something. It's gorgeous. I wish the place at Godric's Hollow was as nice."

Neville seemed to debate something internally for a moment. Finally, he moved a bit closer to his newfound godsister and draped an arm tentatively over her shoulders. She stiffened at the contact, at first, and he moved to withdraw, but Hermione reinforced his wordless support by tugging both into an enormous hug. In that moment, she felt sure the quiet, pudgy, clumsy boy understood her in a way no other child could, and she felt the last of her remaining anxiety slip away along with the pale purple petals drifting to the water.

* * *

September 1st dawned bright and warm. The moment the sun breached the windows and stretched its warm fingers over Dahlia's bed, she leapt eagerly from beneath the sheets, flicked her holly wand behind her, and dashed to the closet opposite. The girl threw open the slatted accordion doors as the covers arranged themselves behind her, and by the time she stripped off her pyjamas and donned the neat, half-sleeved dress and matching robes hung front and centre, her bed lay perfectly made up.

She and Hermione passed breakfast in a state of nervous excitement while Safiya and Dan smiled at their conscious efforts to chew and swallow their food slowly.

"Where are our trunks?" Dahlia asked suddenly, spoon halfway between her cereal and mouth. "They were by the door last night."

Mr Granger smoothed a hand over her head, temporarily pushing down the cowlick at the back of her crown that always made an odd wave there, and grinned when she neither winced nor stilled.

They'd come a long way since December.

"Remus dropped by just after you went to bed to take them up to London. He's meeting us on the platform with Madam Longbottom," he explained. "Apparition's apparently easier without added luggage."

Hermione immediately launched into interrogating her mother about this decision.

"Did you remember to pack up our extra defense books?"

Safiya schooled her features into one of patience rather than her previous mix of exasperation and amusement.

"Yes, dear."

"What about Shakespeare's anthology?"

A disbelieving look prompted her daughter to move on to the next item on her mental list.

"The jewelry box Dahli made me?"

"Of course."

"What about that herbological reference Neville gave us?"

"Mm-hm. Along with the ingredient reaction tables."

"A-level prep work?"

Dahlia swallowed her mouthful of raisin bran and made a face.

"In a notebook, along with photocopies of the relevant sections from your textbooks."

"Coloured ink cartridges?"

"In the case Daddy bought you, second pocket of your school bag. I added a pen knife for each of you, too, to help keep the quills in order."

"Er-"

Her face turned beet red, and she made a sidelong glance at her father, to which he snickered behind his morning paper.

"Those other things you discussed with us last week?"

"You know, I _am_ a medical professional," Dan said mildly. "Yes, Mum packed you both a pouch of ladies' things in case lady-things dads apparently can't know about happen while you're away."

"Hermione!" Dahlia finally interjected, her cheeks pink. "Please, this is Mum and Dad we're talking about. I'm sure everything's there, and if something's missing, I'm sure Hedwig won't mind fetching it for us."

The owl in question, Sirius' gift to Dahlia on her birthday, hooted in a reassuring sort of way from her perch near the open kitchen window. Hermione pouted a bit, but didn't start up again while the family finished breakfast.

Sirius arrived at 10 o'clock sharp to take both the girls, Hedwig (who did _not_ approve of their method of travel), then Dan and Safiya to the platform with a few bouts of apparition. They arrived amidst a growing crowd of parents and children, and aside from their visit to the Ministry a month prior, Dahlia thought there were more wizards on the platform than she'd ever seen all in one place.

Wizards and witches milled about everywhere, most catching up with one another more than anything else. The returning Hogwarts students stood apart from the younger ones, grouping in cliques up and down the platform from which spouted random acts of magic. Younger siblings stared enviously up at the gleaming scarlet steam engine while it breathed fluffy white clouds over their heads. Trunks, meanwhile, wove their way between people's legs, animated by magic on stumpy little legs, hovor charms, rolling on self-propelled wheels, or tugged by children too impatient to wait for their parents' help.

"I knew I'd see a kid off to school, someday," Sirius mumbled thickly, a hand clasped on both Dahlia and Hermione's shoulders. "I just gave up thinking it might be for you."

Dahlia turned and wrapped him in a hug, and the wizard lifted her into the air, spinning her around despite her shrieking laugh and the people dodging her swinging feet. He grinned and kissed Hermione on the head after putting the girl back down.

"I won't try that with you," he muttered to the frizzy-haired witch. You might just murder me in my sleep."

"She's more the car or train type when it comes to transportation," her sister confirmed with a cheeky smile. "Any form of motion not reliant on her legs or a motor and wheels of some sort makes her anxious."

Dan and Safiya wrapped them up next, while Sirius moved to say his goodbyes to a very nervous-looking Neville.

"Remember to write," Dan said with a catch in his throat. "Don't gorge yourself on sweets, and use those cameras we put in there, too."

"Yes, Daddy," Hermione said a little tearfully, hugging her father tightly.

Dahlia, who had been struggling with her emotions since they landed on the platform, sniffed and nodded, not trusting herself to speak, before accepting her own embrace.

"I want to hear about everything," Safiya told them next. "We know you'll both do wonderfully. Just-"

She bit her lower lip, a habit Hermione had inherited.

"Just don't forget to floss," she finished lamely, giving them a watery smile. "Be safe. I love you both."

With that, the girls grabbed their charmed feather-light trunks and Hedwig's cage to follow Neville onto the train. They all stalled in the narrow corridor to wave at their family through the window - the dowager, animagus, werewolf and dentists, all watching them tearily through the glass - before taller students interrupted their view.

"Shall we get a compartment together?" Hermione suggested.

"Yeah," Dahlia agreed, noticing whispers spring up as others recognised them. "Quickly."

Even having boarded almost a full hour early, the children struggled to find an empty compartment until they came to the very last carriage. Hermione directed their luggage, Hedwig's cage, and Trevor's glass terrarium to the overhead storage with her wand. They settled in with the girls on one side and Neville sitting opposite.

"Have you thought about what house you want to go to?" the boy asked as the train whistled and finally crawled forward, rapidly accelerating.

"Gryffindor or Ravenclaw," the girls said in tandem, and Neville frowned.

"Gran wants me to be Gryffindor like Mum and Dad, but I'll probably end up in Hufflepuff," he mumbled.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Hermione frowned, examining their friend over the top of her latest literary pursuit: _Mysteries of Magic._

Neville shifted and slumped against the back of his seat.

"It is," he assured her. "She'd be really disappointed."

"I don't know. I think you underestimate your grandmother," Dahlia mused after a moment. "Either way, I think you'd make a great Hufflepuff or Gryffindor. You're definitely a hard worker, and you have to be brave to survive Sirius' company."

Hermione snorted at that. It was true, enough. The Granger family had been treated to all sorts of insanity in his attempts to help them "acclimatise to the magical world." By his definition, that included a range of magical mischief-making: Fillibuster's Wet-Start Fireworks, turning himself into a dog and terrorising the neighbour's horrible parrot (it shouted insults to people as they passed his window), transfiguring random diners' water to wine when they weren't looking while eating out, and charming the Dursleys' car keys invisible anytime they weren't placed in a particular candy dish on their mantle (unbeknownst to the girls' parents).

The boy cheered considerably at that, and they slipped into relative quiet. Hermione resumed her consumption of magical origin theory, Dahlia went back to flipping through a Quidditch magazine Sirius had slipped into her school bag without her knowing, and Neville returned to perusing his _Herbologist's Helper_ monthly journal. Dahlia found it quite peaceful, sharing one another's company while the landscape outside became greener and wilder with each passing mile, the click and rumble of the train overlaid by muted conversation humming in the background. The knock at their compartment door, therefore, came as a bit of an unpleasant interruption.

Hermione stood first and slid it open with a rattle.

A boy with lots of freckles, flaming red hair, and a smudge on the right side of his nose stared back at her with wide, surprised eyes.

"Er-" he gulped and scratched his head. "Sorry, I was just looking for somewhere to sit. Would you mind? My brothers kicked me out of their compartment, and everywhere's pretty full."

The bushy-haired witch threw a glance over her shoulder. Dahlia shrugged and Neville grimaced nervously.

"Of course," she finally agreed with a polite smile. "Need help with your things?"

She gestured to the battered trunk behind him, and his ears flushed.

"Um, no, thanks, I got it."

The girl returned to her seat beside her sister while the new arrival roughly manoeuvred his case onto the overhead rack, on top of Neville's, before sitting by the window with a tentative grin.

"I'm Ron Weasley, by the way," he said, reaching his hand first out to Neville at his elbow, then the others.

"Hermione Granger," the bubbly witch answered when the shy wizard failed to respond aside from limply grasping the freckled hand. "My sister, Dahlia-"

Dahlia nodded.

"And Neville Longbottom."

The blonde boy gave a short, awkward wave. Ron nodded to each of them before his eyes flicked back to the slim, black-haired girl in an almost comical double-take.

"Dahlia? As in Dahlia _Potter_?" he breathed, leaning forward. "Is it true? Do you really have-"

He gestured vaguely to his own forehead. The witch in question resisted the urge to say something rude. Despite their best efforts, and a noted increase in press coverage of more appropriate topics, gossip still circulated wildly about Dahlia's mysterious escape from her parents' murderer. The scar, which had been featured fairly recently in a photograph taken on a particularly windy day while on a walk in London with Sirius and Remus, had spawned an entirely new round of utterly ridiculous theorisation in regards to the events of that Hallowe'en.

"Yes, but I'm not really comfortable with people staring at it," she said as nicely as she could, adding a tight smile. "It gets old, after a while. I'm really glad to know about my parents, but it's a little hard when all anyone ever asks about is how they died."

Ron's ears reddened, and he scratched his head again.

"Oh," he mumbled. "I'm sorry. I guess I hadn't thought about it that way."

An awkward pause followed, which Neville broke for his own sanity's sake.

"So, are you a first-year, too?"

"Yeah," the redhead confirmed. "Sixth of seven kids. Fred, George and Percy are in Gryffindor, right now. Ginny hasn't gone yet."

The blonde wizard smiled shyly at the idea of so many siblings.

"Have the other two graduated already? What year are the others?"

Ron nodded.

"Bill and Charlie - they're the oldest - work abroad, and Percy, Fred and George are fifth and third years. Our whole family's been going to Gryffindor for generations."

Neville looked intimidated at the idea.

"That sounds like a lot of pressure."

"Yeah, no kidding," Ron grumbled. "I don't think my parents would act too disappointed, mind, but my brothers would never let me live it down, especially the twins. Honestly, I think I'd be fine anywhere, so long as it wasn't Slytherin."

Dahlia flipped a page in her magazine and shrugged.

"I wouldn't mind being a Slytherin, I don't think," she hummed. "It used be an upstanding house, but everything I've heard about its current population seems to point to a rather poisonous culture. If the first year girls are anything like Draco Malfoy, though, it would probably be safer for everyone involved if I steered clear."

The redhead leaned away from her as if she had contracted a terrible disease.

"You're kidding!" he said, wrinkling his smudged nose. "Every dark wizard that's ever been came from Slytherin."

"Er-" Neville glanced anxiously between his godsister and the indignant newcomer. "I don't know about that. Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor, and he blew up a whole street. He took twelve Muggles with him rather than let the Aurors arrest him, and he sold Dahli to You-Know-Who."

Hermione threw him a grateful smile.

"Exactly."

That appeared to stump the boy, but sensing a continuation of the argument would accomplish nothing, the bushy-haired witch moved them firmly away from the topic.

"What do Bill and Charlie do for a living?" she asked interestedly, closing her book. "I've been wondering what witches and wizards do after school, other than work at the ministry or in Diagon Alley."

Ron grinned and launched immediately into regaling them with tales of Bill's adventures cursebreaking for Gringotts and Charlie's experiences at the Romanian Dragon reserve. Hermione particularly enjoyed discussing the magical traditions of other cultures, especially with Flourish & Blotts limited selection in regards to international magical communities, and despite possessing a rather narrow view in some topics, Roon seemed to have quite the mind for history.

Dahlia, however, found herself becoming increasingly concerned with a major issue inherent to either profession.

"That's all amazing, but it sounds a bit risky," she said after a while. "Of course curse-breaking and dragon-keeping has inherent dangers, but the curses and creatures themselves sound like a huge risk to the statute of secrecy. I mean, I suppose obliviation and whatnot's worked up till now, but do wizards know how far technology's come just in the last few years? There have been satellites in orbit since the 60s, and closed-circuit video monitoring is becoming really widespread. Then there's personal recording devices, and the Internet's really taking off."

"I dunno. Charlie told me dragons have some muggle repelling properties on their own, and most magical tombs have muggle-repelling wards, but what's the Inner Net?" Ron asked bemusedly. "And videe-oh?"

"Internet's a technology we've developed that lets people contact one another in minutes and share data almost instantaneously," Hermione explained. "So, whereas a wizard might send an owl, which takes a while to arrive, muggles might send an eMail to someone and they could get it two minutes after it's sent, if both sender and recipient have a fast connection. There are whole sites dedicated to sharing pictures, so if a person lives in the UK and has a family member in the States, they could see everything she shared whenever they wanted, through the comfort of their own home, no paper, parchment or ink involved."

Dahlia nodded emphatically.

"It's expected to advance exponentially, too," she added. "And then there's video. You know how all wizarding pictures move?"

The boys both nodded, both amazed and a bit baffled by the girls' impromptu introduction to modern muggle communication.

"Well, video's a bit like that, except it's all recorded. The images don't react to you, but we can record _hours_ of footage, as much as we have film for. So a whole story could be told on screen, every word acted out and delivered by professionals, or a store owner can watch to make sure no one tries to pocket anything from anywhere in his store, as long as there's a camera pointed at the right spot."

Ron's eyes widened.

"Really?" he breathed. "That does sound really bad. You ought to talk to my dad, then. He's in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, and a big part of his job is to prevent magical stuff from breaking the statute."

Hermione pulled out her diary and made a note.

"I'll ask my parents if they wouldn't mind writing them. I'm sure mum and dad would like to make friends with people who've already put their kids through Hogwarts, in any case," she offered.

Ron shrugged.

"Sure. Merlin knows Dad'll go mad at the chance to make a muggle friend."

A short while after noon, according to hermione's wind-up wristwatch, a woman with a red cap emblazoned with a gold and black Hogwarts Express insignia, matching waistcoat, and chocolate brown robes slid open the door to check in on the four first-years. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled.

"Anything off the trolley, dears?" she asked sweetly.

Dahlia and Hermione gawped openly at the display.

Being dentists' daughters came with several benefits. They never had to worry about horrible dental bills, and they did not suffer from the phobia many people seemed to possess in the face of scrubs-wearing men and women with motorised tooth-cleaning and repairing equipment. They also knew with extreme confidence they would never forget to brush their teeth, and likely would never suffer the pain associated with bad dental hygiene. On the other hand, dentists looked very poorly on sugary foods.

The trolley, therefore, seemed a sinful display of candied goodness ripe for their enjoyment. The girls fell upon it in a flurry of rapid-fire questions for the amused trolley witch while the boys wisely stood away from their sugar-induced fervour.

They stepped back into the compartment twelve SIckles and four Knuts poorer, arms overflowing with Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron CAkes, Cockroach Clusters, Pepper Imps, Liquorice Wands, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, Jelly Slugs, Ice Mice, Fudge Flies, and several Sugar Quills (which apparently wrote just as well as normal quills, with the added benefit of providing a sugary solution to in-class oral fixation).

Neville, who had received more exposure to sweets growing up, sensibly chose several Hadrian's Howling Hand Pies and Cooing Curry Puffs. Ron, meanwhile, unpacked a lumpy package only to wrinkle his nose disappointedly at the corned beef sandwiches within.

"You'd think you've never seen chocolate before," he joked a little glumly, nodding at the girls' horde, which they had rapidly sorted by type on the seat between them.

"Our mum and dad are teeth healers," Dahlia explained. "We only have real sweets on holidays, birthdays, or if we're out to dinner somewhere. Plus, we sort of rushed through breakfast what with wanting to get to the platform on time."

She bit into one of the spiced pumpkin pastries and smiled appreciatively.

"Want some?" Neville offered, holding out a Cauldron Cake. "I'll trade you for a sandwich."

Ron looked longingly at the chocolate sweet, but shook his head.

"No, that's all right. You wouldn't want this," he grimaced, his ears burning red. "It's a bit dry. Mum doesn't have much time, you know, with all of us."

"Go on, Dahlia urged him. "We got enough for you, too, and there's no way we'd be able to eat your share."

The boy apparently had no argument against that.

"Thanks!"

Dahlia and Hermione quickly made their way through each type of confection with the boys' assistance, quickly deciding Bertie Bott's offered more entertainment in the form of flavour roulette than actual culinary enjoyment, and moving on to things they resolved to smuggle home on the trip back. Between Neville and Ron, they received a thorough introduction to each confection.

"The cockroach clusters aren't actually made from cockroaches," Ron said, pausing to coo like a pigeon as a side-effect of the curry puffs. "They're mostly peanuts transfigured to have the texture and stuff. They even scurry in the shop like real bugs, just like the frogs aren't really frogs, either."

Dahia eyed the twitching webbed leg left from her own. Part of her wanted to feel a bit disgusted at the sight, but there was something decidedly fun about the whimsical sweets: part toy, part food.

They were precisely the sort of thing that would have been traded and guarded jealously back at St Anthony's.

"Do any of you collect the cards?" Ron asked once everyone had eaten at least one.

His eyes drifted to the remaining pile of purple and gold boxes longingly.

"Help yourself," Hermione offered genially, already sampling Pepper Imps.

"Thanks!" he leaned forward to grab one, and the pile shifted, making Dahlia flinch away from it.

"Oi! Get out of there!"

Ron scooped up a fat, grey rat, who had apparently escaped from his jacket pocket and burrowed beneath the animated chocolates.

"Who's this?" the green-eyed witch frowned, appraising the rodent critically.

Something about the thing bothered her, like she had forgotten something important, but she couldn't quie place the origin of the feeling.

"Yeah," Ron sighed. "His name's Scabbers. He was my brother Percy's but now that he's a perfect, he's got an owl, instead. I've got my brother Bill's robes and Charlie's first wand, too. You never get anything new when you've got so many brothers."

He shrugged as if it didn't bother him, but Dahlia understood that feeling. Even though she had been lucky in receiving a modest trust for her schooling, all of her clothes, books, toys, and even her round glasses had been purchased second-hand or passed from older children to her.

"I think that's rather clever of your parents," Hermione said kindly. "It's wasteful to get rid of something when it still works perfectly well. There's actually quite the conservation effort in the muggle world to reduce unnecessary rubbish and recycle things that can be reused. I think you'll find a lot of our families are like that, especially if they've got a lot of kids. It's just practical."

The boy's neck reddened a little beneath the freckles, but his gaze landed on the abandoned Quidditch magazine to Dahlia's left, and he quite forgot his embarrassment.

"Do you play?"

"What, this?" the girl gestured to the periodical, and the man on the cover winked before flying out of the shot to join smaller blurs dashing across the pitch depicted behind him. "No. My godfather put it in with my things. I saw it when I went for a book, earlier. I'm not sure on the rules, or anything, but it looks like it might be fun. I'm pretty good at gymnastics, so I think I could give it a go once we've had our flying lessons."

"I don't know what gymnastics are, but Quidditch is brilliant," Ron said with something approaching reverence. "We play at home in the orchard during the summers. It's really the only sport worth playing for wizards. What're-"

He paused, scrunching his face up.

"Er- What's your sport all about?"

"Well," Dahlia began after thinking for a moment to come up with a satisfactorily simple explanation. "It's a competitive sport based around different feats of strength, agility, and acrobatics. You do a lot of flipping through the air and cartwheeling, and some of it's a bit like dancing. Blokes do it too, but not as much as girls."

"Wicked," he grinned. "You'll love Quidditch, then, if you like that sort of thing. There's a lot of mid-air acrobatics, and all while flying. Here-"

Ron took it upon himself to guide her through the journal, pointing out different moves depicted in the photographs, and despite her disbelief such feats could be performed while flying at a hundred miles an hour, she couldn't help but want to try it for herself. Hermione, meanwhile, peppered the boy with questions about other magical sports and entertainment, and when his answers revealed how little else there were, at least to his knowledge, she dug into the particulars surrounding the boy's favourite game.

The next knock on the door came as a bit of a surprise.

Dahlia went to answer it, this time, since Ron and Hermione had begun arguing about the logic of having one ball worth 120 points in a game where each goal only equalled 10.

"Can I help-" the girl's brain caught up to her eyes, and her polite expression hardened into a glare. "You!"

A boy with fine, white-blonde hair stood in the corridor, dressed in some of the finest robes gold could buy. Each lapel and crease held exactingly straight lines from recent pressing, and light reflected almost unnaturally - Dahlia suspected a charm - where his pointed, immaculately polished dress shoes caught the sunny glow beaming from their compartment. He tried to affect a sneer when her eyes returned to his face, completely unaffected by the dislike openly displayed upon her own features, but she felt a little mollified to see his hulking, brutish bookends shift uncomfortably at his sides.

"Miss Potter," the interloper drawled. "I don't think we've properly met. I'm Draco Malfoy, and these are Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle."

His flunkies nodded a nervous greeting. Dahlia's eyes narrowed.

"I wanted to take the opportunity to welcome you back to the wizarding world. I understand you've only recently been reacquainted with your proper family," he continued, apparently oblivious to the tense quiet behind her or the twitch in her eyebrow. "And offer my services acquainting you with other distinguished members of our community. You know, introduce you to the right sort."

He held out his hand. She crossed her arms.

"Unless you're here to apologise to Hermione, I suggest you leave," she coolly intoned. "Or did you forget our last meeting?"

Malfoy's pale cheeks took on an ugly pink tinge.

"Of course not, Potter, but I had hoped we could put that unpleasantness behind us," he said a little more tightly. "I was wholly prepared to forgive your part in our small altercation."

"Apologise," she demanded again. "Or go away."

His self-satisfied smirk disappeared.

"You know, considering what you so recently experienced, one might think you'd be more careful who you associate with," Malfoy spat. "You ought to watch yourself, and your pet mudblood."

Dahlia found her patience expended. In the back of her mind, she noted she had much less of it than before the kidnapping. In any case, she had never taken very kindly to bullying, snobbishness, or prejudice. With a click of her fingers, Draco found the end of her wand pointed between his pale eyebrows.

"You know, considering what we so recently went through, especially considering who came out of that fight alive, one might think _you_ would watch how you speak to _us_ ," she hissed, forcing him further into the corridor and away from their compartment. "And I'll tell you something, you loathsome little ponce-"

She trailed her wand to point under his chin and leaned to whisper in his ear.

" _I_ wasn't the one who delivered the killing blow, so believe me when I say it's in your best interest to stay the hell away from Hermione."

A thrill of pleasure swept her as his face greyed. The bookends backed away from their leader, unwilling to be caught in whatever horror they thought she might unleash on him based on his expression.

"Now run along, before I show you how much you're really worth."

"That was _wicked_ ," Ron breathed after Dahlia shut the door behind her.

She shrugged and flopped back into her seat. Neville looked between the girls nervously while Hermione surreptitiously enfolded her sister's hand in her own.

The remainder of the trip passed without further interruption, occupied by a game called exploding snap, idle chatter, and reading (for Hermione and Dahlia). Before long, the sun set and the children changed into their school robes, and finally, the train slowed to a stop.

Hogsmeade station stood against a background of towering trees, and despite being named for the all-wizarding village nearby, lay quite a distance from both it and the castle. Students clad in their black school robes swarmed the cobbled platform before splitting off into two distinct groups. The vast majority of the young witches and wizards drifted toward a line of carriages waiting on the road, each pulled by a skeletal-looking, winged horse with glowing, red eyes. Despite their fearsome appearance, however, the beasts seemed gentle. One went so far as to snuffle a brunette girl's hair when she accidentally ran into its flank and fell over.

The first-years, however, gathered to the call of the largest man Dahlia had ever seen. She recognised him from his profile in _Hogwarts: A History_ almost immediately from his big, bushy beard and cheery, beetle-black eyes.

"Firs' years this way!" his voice boomed as he waved a lantern over his head.

He waited for the older students to completely depart before he introduced himself.

"Welcome, everyone! I'm Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds for Hogwarts," he said proudly. "In a moment, we'll proceed ter the castle."

He conducted a quick headcount, after which the new students followed him eagerly from the platform to a path cut through the trees. The narrow gravel trail emerged on a calm lake sparkling with the reflections of the stars and moon overhead, where Hagrid directed them to several graceful gondolas docked on the pebble-strewn beach, each featuring a glowing blue lantern hanging from a graceful rod at its stern.

"No more'n four to a boat!"

Dahlia, Hermione, Neville and Ron stepped into one, and the others filled rapidly. Only once everyone had seated did the groundskeeper raise his arm and wave them forward. The boats slid gracefully from the shore, around a bend, and then a collective gasp of wonder and admiration swept the young witches and wizards.

Hogwarts sat atop a sheer cliff, taller and more majestic than any castle of its age ought to have been, by muggle standards, more magical than its depiction on the front of the girls' favourite book. Its numerous spires and sweeping buttresses glowed against the dark night, lit by thousands of golden and stained-glass windows. Dahlia felt Hermione squeeze her hand lightly, and she felt an incredible joy bloom in her gut. After _months_ of waiting, they had finally arrived.

"I wish mum and dad could see this," the taller witch whispered. "It's amazing."

"We'll take pictures next weekend, or sometime after classes, and they can," she murmured back, but she felt her sister shake her head before she stopped speaking.

"I mean, I wish they could be here. Magic's been a such a mixed experience for them, and this… This is just so perfect."

"Everyone watch yer heads!"

The girls barely ducked as their craft glided beneath a curtain of overgrown ivy, and the soft murmurs around her rose in volume as another rocky bank came into view. From there, the hulking wizard led them up a flight of narrow, steep stairs that left his charges panting by the time they arrived in what appeared to be an antechamber lined with medieval portraits. Dahlia rubbed the stitch in her side. She wasn't out of shape by any means, and she still hadn't fared well against that climb. Beside her, Hermione fanned herself while Neville clutched at his stomach. A moment later, the double doors nearby opened to reveal a tall, stern-looking witch draped in forest green robes, tartan sash, and a jaunty black, pointed hat reminiscent of fairy stories.

"Good evening and welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," she greeted them formally. "I am Professor Minerva McGonagall, your deputy headmistress. I shall come to know each and every one of you during your time here, and I hope you will always regard me as a resource and advocate in any endeavor you may pursue."

Her flinty gaze swept the panting and wheezing children, making eye-contact with many of their number.

"In a moment, you shall be sorted to your houses. You should view your housemates as your family here at Hogwarts, and you will always be able to rely on your prefects and head-of-house. Your successes have the potential to earn points for your house, while misbehaviour may result in losses, in addition to other penalties. At the end of spring term, the house with the most points wins the House Cup; therefore, I highly recommend familiarising yourselves with the school's charter and code of student conduct in addition to your textbooks."

She paused again to survey the children, who had mostly recovered from the long trek from the cove numerous levels below.

"Now, you have a few moments before we'll begin the ceremony, so do take the opportunity to smarten yourselves up, then please form a neat queue."

She glanced about once more before departing with a nod of her head for the groundskeeper, who followed her through the doors and into a hall burbling with conversation. Their own group of sixty-some children broke into nervous murmurs as soon as the doors swung closed.

"How do you think they're going to sort us?" Neville wondered, anxiously adjusting his tie and tugging down his waistcoat, which had ridden up during the walk. "Do you think it might be a test?"

"Oh, no, surely they wouldn't!" Hermione squeaked, and her eyes widened in clear panic.

Dahlia took her hand again.

"Couldn't be," she reassured her. "But even if it were, you've been studying for more than a year, now. Also, _Hogwarts: A History_ described the houses by the traits of their founders. It's probably a personality profiler, or something."

This calmed their nearest neighbours considerably, but she still heard others reciting what magic they knew or throwing about wild suspicions. Ron, for example, seemed seriously worried his older brothers hadn't lied about having to fight a troll. Dahlia coached herself to breathe deeply and evenly, mentally reviewing French conjugations just to keep her mind spinning into an anxiety-induced whorl. For all her reassurances to her sister and godbrother, she could feel her own nerves dancing somewhere in her belly, and she began regretting her binge consumption of all that chocolate.

A shriek jerked her abruptly from meditation, and she jumped at the sight of silvery apparitions gliding through the wall overhead. A few others screamed, so she didn't feel quite as badly as she might have, otherwise, considering she recognised exactly who and what they were once she bothered to look at them properly.

"Oh, Hello!" a jolly figure among their number grinned.

Dahlia took in his tonsure, the plain cross hanging from his neck, and drab robes with interest.

"Welcome. New students, yes?"

A few children nodded.

"Well, then, I hope to see you in my house! I was a Hufflepuff, in my day," the friar grinned.

They, too, disappeared into the Great Hall, and a moment later, the doors opened a third time. A collective _ooooh!_ swept the first-years.

Hundreds of dripless candles flickered overhead to cast warm, yellow light onto the four long tables below, all occupied by students wearing robes trimmed in their house colours. Two man-high fireplaces blazed on each of the right and left walls, and a raised dais stood at the back of the hall, where the professors and headmaster sat facing their students. Most wonderfully of all, the vaulted arches faded into what appeared to be the sky outside, where thousands of stars sparkled against a backdrop of velvet black swirling with wispy white clouds.

As the first-years moved toward the stool perched in front of the head table, students from every house stared and whispered in excitement at their arrival. Dahlia felt eyes follow her and Hermione, finding them even when the long aisle widened and allowed the children to spread out. Quiet fell as McGonagall placed what Dahlia might be the rattiest, most ancient looking wizard's hat she had ever seen. Patches covered much of its wrinkled, faded surface, and a wide tear near the brim revealed threadbare red silk underneath. A feeling of expectancy buzzed around them, and just as the first-years' confusion mounted to anxiety-inducing levels, the rip opened wide like a mouth and began singing a song.

 _Welcome to you lucky few_

 _Whose magic drew you hence -_

 _I'm Gryffindor's Sorting Hat:_

 _Your sorting, I'll commence!_

 _Hogwarts' most ambitious_

 _Find a homes in noble Slytherin,_

 _While the loyal and hardworking_

 _Belong with Hufflepuff's kin._

 _The learned and the wise_

 _In Ravenclaw's tower reside,_

 _And those of verve and daring_

 _Find homes in Gryffindor's caring._

 _Put me on, and I will see_

 _The house in which you soon shall be_

 _Come! Sit down, and worry not_

 _For I can read your every thought!_

The Hat seemed to bow in direction of the tables while the students erupted in applause. Dahlia, meanwhile, wondered how Gryffindor enchanted his hat with such complexity. It reminded her very much of the little she had read of computer programming. Was the Hat sentient? Surely, it wasn't alive, but then, if it had memory and self-awareness, she wasn't sure how to classify it.

Her head started hurting, and saw similar curiosity burning on Hermione's face.

McGonagall unfurled a scroll, and with a clear, commanding voice, called:

"Abbott, Hannah!"

Each witch and wizard walked to the stool with some sort of nervous tick. Abbott's face looked pale and drawn before it disappeared within the Hat. Someone called Bennett tripped, eliciting a few giggles and a sigh of exasperation by the potions professor who Dahlia spotted amidst his colleagues, looking bored and disinterested compared to his peers' excited faces. Finally, the deputy headmistress read:

"Granger, Hermione!"

Dahlia squeezed the girl's hand before she straightened her shoulders and walked up to the stool, head held high despite the uncertainty shining in her big, brown eyes. Hermione, meanwhile, felt her thoughts spin rapidly out of control the moment the vaguely cinnamon-scented fabric fell over her eyes.

 _Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God -_

" _Miss Granger, I assure you I am neither a God nor an executioner, as you seem to feel,"_ the hat chuckled and convulsed strangely around her head.

She let out a soft squeak of surprise.

 _I didn't think you'd speak to me, um… Are you a Mr or a Ms, Sorting Hat?_

" _Do call me Patches, and I don't think headwear, even headwear as handsome as I, would have a gender, not that I've ever wanted one or would begrudge other hats such a choice."_

It seemed to contemplate the notion for a moment before dismissing it entirely, moving as if to shrug around her head.

" _In any case, how else would I decide where to put you?"_

Hermione imagined the Hat smiling as it whispered the words in her mind, and then rapidly wondered how _that_ worked, too.

" _I recommend exploring advanced enchanting and mind arts if you're interested, when you're older,"_ the Hat recommended. " _I see you're very keen, indeed, and thirsty for knowledge in all its forms. Ravenclaw_ would _be a good fit."_

 _I sense a 'but.'_

The girl twitched a little on the stool.

 _Would Gryffindor work?_ she suggested hopefully.

" _Oh, dear girl,"_ the Hat chuckled. " _You are very brave to have survived your recent trials, and very dedicated to justice, but I don't think the house of lions would help you as much as another. No- I think there's a house in much greater need of your cleverness and ambition, one that would help you achieve the nascent dreams flitting around in here."_

She went utterly still.

 _Most of the Slytherins_ hate _me already._

" _I think you might be surprised. Those who might, though, desperately need the guidance of a very clever, very resourceful young lady with unusual mettle and the rare privilege of having learned more magic than the average third-year student,"_ Patches the Hat reassured her. " _Had you lacked such exposure and traits, I would never consider placing you there, but it is long past the time for change, and you, I think, could be the catalyst Slytherin dearly needs."_

 _What about Dahlia?_

Patches seemed to sigh and shook its pointed end.

" _Dear girl, from the evidence I see, that child would love you no matter where I sorted you, whether Slytherin or Timbuktu. The real question is, have you the courage and cleverness to reach true greatness among the snakes? Achieving your grand ambitions would do a world of good for not just the wizarding community, but humankind at large."_

She gulped.

 _I hope you're right._

"SLYTHERIN!" bellowed the hat.

Utter silence met its declaration, and it took several seconds before McGonagall lifted the hat off Hermione's head. Her previously stern face had taken on a shocked, worried sort of look, and hers wasn't the only such expression she spotted among the professors.

Nobody clapped except for the headmaster and a smattering of her own housemates as she made her way to Slytherin table on leaden legs, the black satin of her robe's lapel and trim changing smoothly from black to green and silver.

Dahlia stared after her sister while whispers swept the hall.

"But, she's muggleborn!"

"She won't last a night."

"Isn't that Potter's adoptive sister?"

"She must be really dark to wind up there."

She barely registered the suppositions around her or the continuation of the sorting. The excitement fluttering in her chest had turned to dread in that instant, and all she could think about was Hermione at the mercy of bigots like Malfoy. In Dahlia's state of distraction, McGonagall had to call her name twice when her own time arrived. She sat quickly, and the Hat engulfed her head, blocking out the sight of the many staring faces turned toward her.

 _Slytherin- Slytherin- Slytherin-_

" _Oh dear,"_ the Hat murmured mournfully. " _You've been through quite a bit already, haven't you?"_

 _Yes. That doesn't matter. Put me with Hermione._

" _Tut tut,"_ the Hat chided. " _My decisions are based entirely on the contents of your head. I'll have you know such loyalty would have pleased Helga, in her day, though I think your distrust for strangers would make you poor fit in her house. You've an excellent mind, but like your sister, I think you would be wasted on Ravenclaw."_

 _Please put me in Slytherin_ , she asked again. _They'll murder her._

" _I think you'll find they won't,"_ the Hat argued. " _And you do your sister a disservice by underestimating her ability to take care of herself. She'll make friends, though it may be slow-going, at first. Slytherin needs Hermione Granger, and Hermione Granger needs Slytherin more than either of you know."_

 _I'm ambitious. I can be cunning, and I have goals for my life, even if they're not big ones. I'd do well there._

The hat seemed to consider her words for a long while, but she felt it frowning long before it spoke again.

" _Miss Potter, Slytherin is the exact opposite of what you need. In such a place, your every decision would be based on your desire to defend your sister. They would alienate you both for your aggression, and while I'm sure you'd earn their respect out of intimidation, if nothing else, such a dynamic will do nothing but worsen the situation, there,"_ it explained very seriously. " _Such a dynamic would do nothing but hurt you, too. Everyone is capable of great brutality if spurred hard enough, and such an outcome would be a crime against your magic and your parents' legacy, were I to allow such a thing to happen to you."_

Dahlia didn't know what to think of that, but she latched onto the first concept she could grasp in its argument.

 _So, protecting my sister would somehow make me into a worse person?_ she asked incredulously. _That doesn't make sense._

" _Oh, no, dear girl,"_ the Hat sighed. " _The environment in which you would find yourself, the way you naturally react to aggression, the constant anxiety in a house whose current leaders use violence and fear to maintain order - You would inevitably turn to those same tools, and you would feel justified in doing so. This in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing in every case, but for you, from what I see here, your motivations would change. The line you set for yourself would blur, and eventually… Well, I am not omniscient, and I'm not a seer, but the potential is there. Better not risk it, I say. No. You need_ GRYFFINDOR!"

The Hat shouted the last word, and the hall erupted with applause. She very much felt like setting the Hat on fire, though, as she handed it back to the deputy headmistress and marched woodenly to the Gryffindor benches. A redheaded prefect Dahlia vaguely recognised as one of the brothers Ron had mentioned shook her hand before she sat. They made room for her, and it took quite a while for the twins, sitting opposite, to stop shouting:

"WE GOT POTTER!"

The girl didn't pay much attention to the remainder of the sorting. She ate mechanically, unable to really enjoy the magic around her. Worst-case scenarios elbowed their way to the front of her mind despite her best efforts to counter them with logic. Her gaze kept falling on the indifferent Professor Snape, whose sneer made him look like he'd scented something disgusting.

She had to owl her parents and Sirius. Surely they could do something to get Hermione out of his snake pit.

"Dahlia?"

The girl looked up at the tentative voice in surprise to find Neville sitting at her elbow, his round face shining with worry.

"Are you all right?" he asked softly. "You _hate_ brussels sprouts. It's not Hermione, is it?"

She stared at her fork in surprise, and her tastebuds finally registered the awful, bitter flavour. Her churning stomach lurched unpleasantly, and she reached quickly for her water. It felt cool and tasted lovely in comparison, but unfortunately the liquid just couldn't overcome the terrible vegetable reminiscent of animal droppings in flavour and odour.

"Here," Neville offered, pushing a goblet full of orange liquid that smelled of cinnamon and ginger.

The mouthful of cold, pumpkin-pie-ish juice immediately cured her palate, and she returned to the matter at hand.

"They're going to hurt her," Dahlia hissed. "She can't be with Malfoy and his goons! It's ridiculous."

Her godbrother frowned and nodded to where Hermione sat, shoulders tense, between a willowy blonde and another girl with a black alice-band and short, brown hair.

"That's Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis," Neville said reassuringly. "I've known them since we were really little. My gran has taken me for tea and vice-versa. Tracey's a half-blood, and Daphne's her best friend, and really nice, once you get to know her."

Dahlia observed both for a moment, but her scowl remained in place.

"What about the other girls in our year?"

The blonde boy winced and nodded to two dark-haired witches sitting across from Draco Malfoy, as far away from Hermione they could get.

"Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bullstrode, but they're outnumbered. If it comes to a fight, or something, Daphne and Tracey will at least make sure it's one-on-one or get their head-of-house or Professor Flitwick," he whispered. "And boys can't go into girls' dorms, either. Hermione's brilliant. She'll be fine."

Dahlia did not doubt her sister's ability to defend herself. She had seen first-hand her proficiency with a wand, and she'd improved quite a lot in physical self defense. What she did worry about, though, were the insults and emotional abuse they could heap on her, to which Dahlia also knew from experience Hermione would not rise to.

Then, there were the dreams.

In the months following their kidnapping, torture, and almost-murder, the girls had experienced night terrors almost daily. They eventually became less frequent as they worked through their fears and applied what they learned in therapy, but more often than not, either Hermione or Dahlia would leave her bed in the middle of the night to comfort the other. One would curl up at her sister's side and hold her hand while the other cried or tried to get control of her breathing, until both lay exhausted and damp from tears, huddled against the other.

As soon as Dumbledore ended the feast with his start-of-term announcements, Dahlia rushed to her sister, ignoring Percy's indignant call to join the other first-year Gryffindors.

"Hermione-"

The girl turned around, paler than usual and unsmiling.

"Dahli!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing?"

"What are _you_ doing?" the Gryffindor countered. "Let's go to the headmaster. He can put you in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw."

To her surprise, Hermione's expression hardened determinedly. Dahlia noticed the girls Neville had pointed out, Daphne and Tracey, watching them inconspicuously from a short distance.

"I don't want to be in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw," she countered. " I'll make an excellent Slytherin."

Her tone softened a bit.

"I'm going to miss the proximity, though. But we'll share classes, and weekends, right?"

Dahlia nodded and wrapped the girl in a tight hug.

"Tell me if they do anything," she pleaded in a whisper. "I'll always come if you need me."

"All right," Hermione smiled, her eyes gleaming, and nodded. "I had better go. It looks like your prefect's about to take points."

Reluctantly, Dahlia released her and turned to follow the first year Gryffindors from the hall. Neville drifted to her side, and she never felt gladder to have met Sirius Black and the boy he'd all but adopted in their parents' stead. She wouldn't be completely surrounded by strangers in her house, and she knew of two girls who might be counted on to help Hermione, or at least not add to anything the others might do.

Still, after mirror-calling Sirius and her parents, who expressed the same worries she felt, Dahlia fell into a fitful sleep on her soft, unfamiliar, too-big feeling four-poster.

* * *

 **As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope you'll take a minute to review. Your feedback adds some pep to my muse's pom-pom waving, and your constructive criticism helps me improve as a writer.**

 **Moving Forward:** We'll be diverging more and more from the canonical first year as this progresses. You'll see what I mean. Just thought I'd deliver a general reminder this story represents an enormously altered universe in which most of the key things factoring in Harry's story have changed dramatically.

I have a rough outline through the end of year 7, but there are things yet to be determined. So, if you'd like to suggest anything, I may be inclined to include your ideas if they tickle my fancy and fit especially well with the plot I've planned. Of course, I'll absolutely credit your contribution to this story's evolution.

OTHER NOTES - Rowling has stated in interviews there are about 1,000 students studying at Hogwarts, which is much more reasonable than the 200-something estimated from class sizes and named characters in the books and movies.

Also, I'm pretty certain 200-something future adults aren't enough to sustain a breeding population, even if I factor in older wizards and witches or cross everyone with muggles.

That's an average of 100 more kids per year level than who are named or hinted at in the books, so many characters you see may not exist in the canon. Based JK's stated inventory of Hogwarts, I've also calculated what a reasonable total wizarding population may be, factoring in extended lifetimes and both wars.


	10. The Slytherin Sister

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Ten: The Slytherin Sister

* * *

Hermione woke to the shifting glint of sunshine through deep, green waters streaming through the thick panes of glass arching overhead, each held in place by swirling arms of metal and magic woven into slim, graceful serpents who curled and curved in designs reminiscent of art nouveau, though she knew the design to be unchanged since the school's founding. She took a moment to appreciate the sight through the translucent silvery canopy draping her bed, interrupted occasionally by murky shadows swimming past, and revelling in the feel of the deep green silk under her fingers. The damask coverlet swathed her in warmth, chasing away the chill of the underwater dormitory as effectively as any fire - a result of permanent temperature-regulating charms, she suspected.

She knew it would be the last moment of total peace in what she expected to be a very long, very trying day, despite everything she had said to Dahlia and her parents (via mirror-call) the night before.

Eventually, though, the chime of the enormous grandfather clock set into the wall opposite her bed echoed through the chamber, and her fellow first-year girls began stirring to her left and right.

Hermione willed herself out of bed and padded quickly to their shared bathroom with its gleaming marble floor, stained glass windows, and silver fixtures. She hung her toiletry organiser from a naga-shaped hook beside a gleaming mirror and a shell-shaped wash basin. The half-woman, half-snake creature of metal and magic helpfully curved an arm to hold the fluffy towel Hermione levitated from a basket across the room.

Teeth brushed, face washed, lotion applied, hair combed and braided in a tight plait down her back, jewelry in place, the girl left the lavatory dressed in her new Slytherin robes, confident she at least looked the part the Sorting Hat seemed to think she could play.

Her dorm mates mostly ignored her while she stowed her things in her trunk and packed her school bag. She debated briefly what books to bring with her, as they had yet to receive their timetables, but lifting it reminded her it hardly mattered. Featherlight charms, she thought, should be standard in all luggage. She wondered briefly at the possibilities for scientific application before double-checking the holster obscured beneath her left sleeve and surveying the room.

Pansy Parkinson, a girl with a short, dark bob, severe fringe and unusually upturned nose sneered at her, but said nothing. Millicent Bulstrode, her thickset neighbour, paid her similar attention. Daphne Greengrass, however, met her gaze and held it. The slender blonde raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she tied back her honey-blonde hair in a loose ponytail with a black satin ribbon. Tracey Davis tilted her head slightly, the auburn notes in her brown hair catching the light strangely as the girl observed her.

"Good morning," Hermione greeted, smiling despite the familiar, first-day-of-school nervousness coiling in her gut. "Greengrass and Davis, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Daphne said blandly, trading a subtly curious glance with her friend, who sat on her bed, halfway through the process of rolling on her thick cotton stockings.

"Hermione Granger," the muggleborn witch said, holding out her hand to each girl in turn. "Would you mind if I walk with you today? It'd be a comfort to have someone with more experience than myself explaining any cultural subtleties I might have missed, growing up muggle. I'm sure you both could teach me quite a lot."

The girls looked surprised at her humble request and subtly complimentary supposition. They seemed to debate their answer in a silent exchange of micro-expressions.

"Of course, Granger," Davis eventually answered with a small, knowing smile. "I'm sure there's much you could teach us, too. It's exceedingly rare to meet someone with so much first-hand knowledge of the wider world."

"Thanks eversomuch," Hermione beamed.

Neither Bulstrode nor Parkinson said anything, but both sneered after then when the trio finally left a few minutes later.

She positioned herself at Daphne's left and walked straight-backed from the girls' corridor toward the exit, and it took everything she had not to look around at the eyes she could feel following her, even when the sensation continued beyond the common room. Instead, she forced herself to make polite conversation with her dorm mates and tentatively chosen allies.

"Are there any subjects you're especially looking forward to?" she asked as they sat at their long table for breakfast.

Daphne looked up from her soft-boiled egg and minute toast points to pass her a jug of chilled pumpkin juice.

"Ollivander said I have an affinity for charms, so I'm curious to expand my studies, there," the blond answered with bland nonchalance, delicately tapping her spoon over her egg. "Mother showed me a few, but it's another experience entirely to learn under a master."

Hermione smiled and took a sip of the sweet and subtly spiced beverage, schooling her features into polite interest despite her mixed feelings toward the flavour. Her parents, she felt sure, would not approve, though they disliked juices on principle, nevermind their respective coffee and tea additions. She just couldn't get over how un-breakfast-y it tasted. Whatever was the matter with plain orange juice? Or better, cranberry? Unfortunately, she could not spot either among the burnished gold and crystal pitchers near her, but she did spy a beautiful teapot and matching gilt, hinged glass box filled with delicate, handsewn bags of whole leaf tea. A lovely little cup and saucer appeared by her plate the moment she touched the box.

"I've gotten fairly good at the ones I've tried, but my wandwork will definitely benefit from professional guidance," she agreed, blushing when she realised her new acquaintances had been waiting for her answer. "Sirius isn't very good at describing what he's doing, for all his skill, and poor Remus was so busy this summer sorting Dahlia's post issues, he didn't have much time to show us anything."

Tracey leaned forward to look around her friend while she picked at her modest breakfast.

"How very kind of them both to help," she said with an odd lilt to the words. "Have you had a lot of practice spellcasting, then?"

"Oh, yes," Hermione hummed, smiling around a sip of slightly sweet black tea flavoured with bits of orange peel. "I turned eleven last September, you see, so I had my letter and books for almost a full year, and then when Dahlia joined the family, we had to catch her up, too, so I've had a lot of revision, as well."

She carefully kept her gaze on Daphne and Tracey's faces, though she heard a few conversations around them quiet at the revelation.

The girl had thought quite a lot about what to do about her sorting before she fell asleep the night before, and Sirius had been a wonderful resource after getting over his initial worry and frustration. The wizard had provided several pointers to winning her housemates' esteem and avoiding the aggression some were sure to direct at her at some point.

First, he recommended fastidious attention to politesse. Second, he warned her she mustn't give ground to anyone. She couldn't admit inferiority in any way, or the others might take advantage. He also suggested she rein in her tendency to showcase her exuberance for learning, which might be interpreted as obnoxiously prideful. That advice, she thought ruefully, would have come in handy in her early days of primary school, but after spending so much time with Dahlia, she had come to understand the lesson well enough. Finally, he'd shrugged and sighed at her before imparting a final wisdom:

" _Leave them wanting more: more knowledge, perspective, favours, whatever- Slytherins, the real ones, anyway, won't make a move until they're sure they know everything about a potential rival, and the bad ones will generally wait until there aren't any witnesses around before showing their colours. It's a basic survival instinct among their lot."_

Hermione took another sip of her fragrant tea. She could see curiosity outweighing the reflexive dislike on most of her housemates' faces, even the older ones, and as Sirius had said, Draco and those obviously of his mindset seemed satisfied to hold their silence beneath public scrutiny.

"Hermione-"

The girl turned and smiled broadly as Dahlia rushed from the entryway to her table, ignoring the calls of her scarlet-clad housemates. The Slytherin scooted over to make room on the bench for her sister. The Gryffindor squared her shoulders, and after a sideways glance at her green and silver-clad dorm mates, took a seat beside her.

"Dahlia," Hermione said as soon as a place setting appeared in front of the Gryffindor. "This is Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis. They've been kind enough to help me settle in here."

The green-eyed witch nodded to both, leaning back from the table to awkwardly shake their hands.

"Pleasure. I'm glad Hermione's got you two," she said stiffly, her gaze shifting between the many people watching their exchange with disbelief. "Neville was telling me about you last night, and I was really relieved- Er-"

Dahlia paused and winced around what Hermione felt sure would have been a rude remark regarding the other Slytherins' moral fibre.

"I mean, I'm really glad she's got the opportunity to acquaint herself with witches like you," she amended. "Anyone Neville recommends is someone I'd like to know, myself."

"How sweet of him. I'll have to thank him for his glowing commendation," Daphne said a little wryly, her lips curling in a teasing smirk. "Do tell him he's welcome to join us sometime, too."

Tracey snorted indelicately and coughed into her serviette, and Dahlia frowned, sure she had missed some joke by the girl's reaction.

The remainder of breakfast passed in somewhat stilted conversation sustained purely by Hermione's will and Daphne's blithe attitude in the face of everything. Davis joined in with precious little frequency, too entertained by their housemates' reactions and Dahlia's obvious discomfort to completely suppress her amusement. The awkward meal ended with the Slytherin prefects' call to collect timetables, and the interloping Gryffindor took her cue to return to the other lions and her stern head-of-house, who had been watching her from the moment she deviated from the expected path upon her entrance into the Great Hall.

"Homework in the Library after dinner?" Hermione called after her.

"Sure," her sister agreed eagerly, wrapping her in a brief hug. "See you in class."

The young Slytherin smiled a little sadly at the pang of reticence she felt as Dahlia released her. She had resigned herself to not seeing her sister as often as she liked, but as luck would have it, they ended up sharing their first lesson that morning.

* * *

"Look, over there."

"Where?"

"There, in the glasses."

"Did you see her with the snakes this morning?"

"Did you notice her scar?"

"Did you see her adoptive sister?"

"The _Prophet_ said that death eater kept her as some kind of pet for ages."

"The Aurors said they killed Scabior."

"No way! She must have done something else to escape."

"She must be a dark witch."

"I read she's lived in a hovel all this time."

Dahlia walked stiffly between Neville and Ron, eyes trained straight ahead as she avoided the stares of her classmates and ignored their whispers.

After years of being the odd one out - the speccy orphan, as she'd self-deprecatingly described herself to her sister, and before, the swot or the freak, as the other kids at St Anthony's had sometimes dubbed her - she was used to her classmates discussing her in whispers, but nothing could have prepared her for the sort of attention she received that morning. She fervently hoped Hermione wasn't getting the same sort of treatment.

Thankfully, her godbrother kept close to her side, occasionally bumping her elbow with his in a clumsy gesture of affection and support, and it was enough to keep her moving, her face blank as she searched for Hermione's bushy hair among the crowd. She didn't have to look long, though. Unfortunately, some of Hermione's classmates, the dark-haired girls Neville had winced at, before, and Malfoy with his bookends, cut her off before she could claim a seat beside her sister. The bushy-haired witch sent her a sympathetic smile as she settled in next to Davis, and Dahlia resignedly sat beside Neville, who seemed to shrink in on himself as he fearfully eyed the dark, dungeon laboratory.

She could not blame him. If it weren't for her other worries, she might have been intimidated by the gleaming jars of pickled animals displayed on every wall, the sinister squirm of magical plants displayed in glass cases, and the draft sucking all the warmth in the room toward the ceiling.

The professor's entrance only served to enforce her conviction she would not be enjoying Potions lessons.

Professor Severus Snape swept into the room at precisely 9 o'clock, and the heavy door slammed shut behind his billowing black robes. He surveyed his students with marked disdain. The expression darkened into clear dislike when his gaze found the red-and-gold-clad among their number before he began by taking the register.

His low, thrumming voice read off each name with equal disinterest until she heard her own roll off his tongue in clipped tones, barely uttered around a sudden sneer.

"Potter," he drawled, fixing his cold stare on the small first-year girl seated at the front of the room. "How generous of you to grace us common folk with your presence after achieving such… Renown... In the wider community."

Several Slytherins, including the blonde ponce and his posse, snickered at his snide address. One table away, Hermione stiffened in her seat and began worrying her lower lip with her newly reproportioned front teeth.

"I hope you won't expect any special treatment in this class," the professor added contemptuously. "I think you'll find me most unsympathetic, no matter how much a princess you imagine yourself to be."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Professor," she gritted when it became clear he expected an answer. "I look forward to benefiting from your expertise."

One of his thick, dark eyebrows arched dramatically at her polite, carefully worded response.

"Indeed?" he looked askance at the green-eyed witch in the beat of silence that followed. "Well then, let's see how much of my 'expertise' you'll need before we dive into things. Tell me, where might one find a bezoar?"

She blinked, but quickly recalled the relevant part of her text.

"They're formed in a goat's stomach and are common to most potions kits for their properties as an all-purpose detoxifier and antidote to most poisons," she replied.

He made a mocking expression of feigned surprise and appreciation.

"Wonder of wonders," he drawled. "The princess has more than frills and fluff between those ears. Let's try another, shall we?"

Dahlia shifted in her seat, and Hermione mirrored her fidgeting, partially visible behind Malfoy's smirking face.

"What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

It took a little longer for her to supply the answer. She wouldn't have remembered at all except for Neville's gentle nudge against her ankle. Her brow furrowed as she recalled his extremely comprehensive introduction to magical flora.

"Nothing, sir. They're names for the same plant, also known as aconite."

The potions master sneered.

"And what potion would result from powdered root of asphodel and an infusion of wormwood?"

She knew for certain _that_ wasn't in their standard book of potions, but she knew the ingredients general properties from Neville's tutelage.

"A strong sedative or a poison, I believe, from what I know of their traits," she finally guessed. "I'm not sure, Professor."

He sighed dramatically.

"It's clear fame can't compensate for one's shortcomings," he rumbled, to a round of snickering from many of his snakes. "That will be one point from Gryffindor for your unpreparedness."

Dahlia felt her face redden.

"The mixture would yield the base for a potion known as the drought of living death, should any of you bother to take note."

He swept the aisles back to the front of the room, where he flicked his wand at a blackboard. A slender piece of chalk rose at his bidding and began writing instructions across its dusty surface in jagged script, and all at once a flurry of bag-searching ensued as his students took out books, parchment and potions kits.

"And Potter," the professor hissed over the noise, not bothering to raise his voice.

The moment he opened his mouth, it seemed everyone went out of their way to move more quietly. Like some of the teachers from Marie Curie's, the man had a talent for silencing a classroom with naught but a sideways glance.

"Take care you don't fall behind, or you might find my next impromptu quiz a more practical sort. I'm sure your adoring public would hate for their heroine to come to any harm due to her own negligence."

He returned to his desk, flicked his wand at an hourglass seated beside his nameplate, and Dahlia quickly began organising their ingredients for the simple boil-curing potion assigned for the day. Neville seemed happy to let her lead him, so she tasked the boy with preparing their herbal ingredients while she crushed snake fangs into a fine powder, parsed out porcupine quills, and weighed horned slugs. She placed each measured and prepped ingredient in its own small ceramic saucer or beaker, as Safiya had recommended during their first at-home attempt at potion-making. Rather than follow the directions as written on the board or in her book, though, Dahlia relied on her notes on the hows of brewing the mixture, itself.

Meeting Sirius had come with other benefits - ones she had never considered when she came to understand her true history.

On her eleventh birthday, her godfather and his best friend had presented her with a Hogwarts trunk filled with treasures she had only dreamed of, and tucked within lay a veritable horde of information that changed forever her perception of the texts assigned to her, because amid the yellowed spiral-bound notepads and dog-eared books hid a handsome leather book embossed with a lily-of-the-valley: her mother's journal.

She spent most of her eleventh birthday fighting back tears. She had never experienced a birthday party before then, and her mother's things had made her feel closer to Lily Evans than ever before.

The journal's pages quickly made her question what she had come to accept as gospel in regards to textbooks. They forced her to remember the vast difference between muggle and magical scholarship. Whereas her chemistry book relied on decades', sometimes centuries', worth of peer-reviewed studies, the magical community tended to present different researchers' independently drawn conclusions as equally viable for students' use. In no way could one be assured her school-assigned set of instructions would promise the _best_ results, though they had been vetted for acceptable accuracy, and Lily Evans had identified that shortcoming and resolved to take an experimental approach to nearly every task assigned to her, so long as it was relatively safe to do so. Under a master's supervision, that gave her quite a bit of leeway.

The documentation for her many at-home trials conducted with the scientific method quickly proved the woman had been a prodigy in more than one subject, and her notes - now Dahlia's - consistently provided more efficient, more complete instructions than any one of her assigned texts. They also mentioned several ways a mixture might be further improved. Since this was Neville's first brewing experience, she had already resolved to implement a few for his safety and convenience. Lily had made details notes about what happened when her experimentation went wrong, and Dahlia had added to them when she practiced brewing under Sirius' adoring gaze.

Her hand shot out to prevent the boy from adding water to their cauldron.

"What's wrong?" he whispered, glancing over her shoulder at their professor, who had begun walking between the tables and criticising the others' work.

She heard the man praise Draco Malfoy somewhere behind her.

"My mother was really good at potions," she whispered back. "She figured out a better way to do this."

He whimpered and cast a nervous glance at Professor Snape.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

He considered for a moment, but finally nodded his assent to her planned deviation without further convincing. Dahlia really loved that about her godbrother. He could be painfully shy, exceedingly clumsy, and socially awkward to the extreme, but he consistently showed more loyalty and trust than she thought most people capable of.

Working quickly and using Neville as a barrier between their work and Snape's critical gaze, she added the powdered fangs to the empty pewter vessel, took her holly wand in hand, and waved it over the cauldron in a smooth figure-eight.

" _Transistus fasis,"_ she whispered, carefully fixing the transformation in her mind.

The tiny particles under her focus coalesced and liquefied, creating a small, milky pool.

"Now, you heat it until it turns translucent, then add the horned slugs, and a half-measure of distilled water."

"Right."

He followed her instructions to the letter, after which she sprinkled the finely shredded nettles on top and waved her wand over the mixture to stabilise it.

"All right," she grinned after sniffing the acid-green mixture and deeming it satisfactory. "While it's stewing, I can show you that phase-change charm I used for the snake fangs. We'll need it again for the porcupine quills."

He nodded nervously, but drew his wand from the pocket of his robes.

"Let's try it on water, since there's so much of it and nothing bad could happen if it goes wrong," she suggested, pushing a beaker toward him. "Just focus on the water and imagine it as a solid, as ice, and wave your wand in a slow figure-eight over top, and say ' _trans-ist-us fac-is."_

"Right."

Despite the boy's nerves, though, Neville got it on his second attempt. She coached him through changing it back into water, and both grinned.

"Great. Now, do the same thing for the porcupine needles. Imagine them melting, and use the same spell," she directed, pushing the little dish of spines toward him.

Neville gulped, but adjusted his grip and cast. Like the powdered fangs, the solid ingredient melted down, giving off steam as it pooled and darkened.

"Longbottom!"

The boy flinched and dropped his wand, nearly sending the dish careening to the floor. Dahlia caught it and moved it away from the table edge as the potions master descended on them with a glare.

"What are you doing, Longbottom?" he breathed menacingly, plucking up the dish. "I thought I made it clear there was to be no casting in this laboratory outside of the prescribed finishing spells outlined in the instructions. Am I to take it you're deaf and blind as well as mentally deficient, or are you simply that eager to earn my ire?"

His hissed invective rapidly reduced the boy to a trembling, stuttering mess.

"I- I- I-"

"You _what_ , boy?"

Dahlia put a hand on her godbrother's shoulder and schooled her features before meeting their professor's gaze.

"He was using a phase-changing spell to prep the porcupine quills for incorporation once our slugs are done stewing," she pronounced in clear, even tones. "I showed him how."

A flash of an emotion the girl could not identify for its swiftness flitted across his features before his thin mouth and dark eyes settled into a derisive scowl.

"Oh, really? And how, pray tell, would you - a child barely introduced to magic - manage such a feat? Are you admitting to cheating in my classroom?"

Her teeth ground together, and her fingers curled into fists at her sides.

"No, sir," she gritted. "My mother was a certified potions mistress, and my sister and I experimented using her notes over the summer under our parents' supervision."

She felt Ron kick at her stool in an unsubtle warning to hold her tongue. She shot him a glare.

"I see," Snape murmured silkily. "Seeing as you're so gifted in this area, perhaps you don't need a professor's expertise, after all."

"I didn't mean-"

"Don't interrupt, Potter," he snapped. "Ten points, each, for deviating from the book-"

A wave of his wand vanished their perfectly stewed slug-and-snake-fang mixture along with the melted porcupine quills.

"A 'zero' for the day, and a detention for you both. Eight o'clock, this evening, in my office."

Neville made a choked sound, and the girl felt her aspen wand warm against her left arm.

"Yes, professor."

He grimaced, and Dahlia sat heavily as Malfoy, Parkinson, Bulstrode and the hulking bodyguards smirked at them.

"Dahli, Gran-" her godbrother whimpered as soon as the professor had moved on to criticising their other housemates. "I can't have detention! It's our first day."

"I'm sorry, Nev," she whispered back. "Don't worry. I'll write her a letter explaining it was my fault. We just have to be quicker about it, next time. It would have been perfect."

He shuddered.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? I think he's made it pretty clear how he feels about-"

"Yes, Neville," Dahlia said more harshly than she meant. "You can't let people tell you 'no' for no other reason than their say-so. If this were really about safety, I'd agree with you, but he's obviously got it out for Gryffindor. I'll just ask the Weasleys whether he's ever changed the curriculum, and if he hasn't, we'll just come to class with our ingredients prepped ahead of time."

He looked unconvinced, but thought it better not to argue after spotting the pink flush covering her cheeks and the furious glint in her eye. They spent the remainder of class working on their homework assignment, twelve inches of parchment on brewing safety and conditional ingredient reactions.

* * *

Despite Daphne and Tracey's whispered warnings that no good could come of it, Hermione remained after the rest of her classmates fled from the damp, cold potions lab.

"Granger, I do not recall asking you to stay behind," her head-of-house appraised her, his previous sneer absent from his face. "I suggest you leave before you are late to Charms. I believe I made my policy on rule-breaking quite clear last night."

"Yes, Professor," she acknowledged.

It would have been difficult to forgot his dramatic entry into the common room and his private welcome speech to his new and returning charges. His monologue had been impressive enough she might have committed it to memory, but tired and anxious as she was, the witch condensed his subtly delivered threats into far simpler terms.

Do not get caught, or the punishment will double.

Present a unified front, or else.

Do not cause trouble for Professor Snape, or face his considerable wrath.

She had succeeded at abiding by the second rule despite him goading her sister through the entirety of the lesson, and she had not been given the opportunity to break any codified rules, yet, but Hermione knew very well her loitering bordered dangerously on the professor's definition of causing him trouble.

"I just wanted to ask about my performance today," she said blandly. "I couldn't help but notice two others students used similar techniques as I did, and they were marked down. I would hate to be penalised, too, so I thought I should check with you so as to avoid future issues."

His cool, black stare settled on her, and he put down his quill to pluck her potion, a phial of greenish, viscous liquid, from several others in the tray set on the corner of his desk.

"It seems you achieved a perfect boil-curing remedy," he remarked dismissively. "I see no reason why you should worry, Miss Granger."

She bit her lower lip at that, but forged on.

"In that case, Professor-"

The wizard released a long, tired sigh and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers over his crossed knees.

"Let us dispense with your roundabout attempt at redeeming your pet lions, shall we?"

She flushed, but fell silent.

"Simply put, Miss Granger, you are a Slytherin. You know well the consequences for any misdeed you may achieve by accident or design, and unlike many of your yearmates, you may be clever enough to avoid such foibles."

He considered her closely for several seconds.

"I needn't remind you of your…" Snape frowned deeply. " _Unique_ situation. I must at least assume the hat judged you capable. Furthermore, I can rely on your housemates to ignore your example until your results are proven superior to their own. Lions are not so diligent. If they think one of their number can show them a quicker way - that experimentation or shortcuts would be tolerated, proof or no - I think you'd find the infirmary quite full before you could say 'duck and cover'."

"I understand that, Professor," she tried again. "But that doesn't explain why at the beginning of class-"

"You only have ten minutes remaining before Professor Flitwick calls the register in your next lesson, Granger," he cut across her in clipped tones. "Last I checked, his classroom resides at least that much from this lab. I recommend you find your way there before your name is added to my evening's detainees."

Hermione knew better than to ignore his second dismissal, so she slung her bag over her shoulder and left the room. A quick glance at her watch spurred her to run through the dungeon corridors and to the grand staircase, where Daphne and Tracey had waited on her her, to her immense surprise and appreciation.

"She lives," the blonde hummed, immediately taking the lead on the marble risers. "How did your little confrontation go?"

"As well as you probably imagined," the bushy-haired witch huffed as they turned down a narrow corridor. "I can't tell if he hates Dahlia, in particular, or Gryffindors as a rule."

"I don't know about disliking her in particular," Tracey countered musingly. "My older brother Robert told me he likes to make an example of someone just to establish dominance in all of his first-year classes. It's always Hufflepuff or Gryffindor. To be fair, though, the most accidents seem to stem from those houses."

"There are other ways to establish dominance," Hermione insisted darkly. "He was asking her questions from the fifth year curriculum. No, there's something else going on. Professor Snape looks about the same age as Sirius. I bet he'll know."

Daphne smiled thinly.

"Why would you think Lord Black would take any interest in Professor Snape?" she asked innocently.

Hermione glanced her way, noting the subtle gleam to her eye. Even passing information about a legislator, apparently, held particular value to the blonde.

"I don't know if he has any particular acquaintance with him personally. It's more of a guess," Hermione said honestly. "We've got, what, nine hundred-something students? I know the numbers were likely greater before the war, but still, my private secondary school had nearly two thousand girls in attendance, and I knew most of my year-mates' names."

Tracey blinked and her eyebrows drew together in confusion.

"Where do the boys go to school, then?"

Hermione looked at her oddly.

"Er… Well, there are seven secondary schools in Crawley I know of. I think there's only one or two other for girls, only, so I imagine any of the other five."

"Wait, how many muggles _are_ there?" Daphne demanded,

"In Britain?"

Her expression glazed for a moment. She had completed a project concerning population growth shortly before the end of her last time at Marie Curie's. Even with everything she experienced and the fallout after, she could still recall the salient points of her muggle education with perfect clarity.

"Fifty-seven million as of last year," she said confidently. "More, now."

Her dormmates stared at her disbelievingly.

"Really," she assured them. "Our records are very well-kept, and they're only becoming more efficient with computers."

She paused to push open the charms classroom door, and they filed ahead of her just as the quarter-hour bells tolled before abruptly falling silent at the wave of their minute instructor's wand. If Daphne and Tracey seemed a bit disturbed by her words, she chose not to comment.

After that, she found herself too inundated by the castle's rich environment to manage anything beyond keeping a politely bland smile fixed to her face while she followed her fellowes to each lesson, which was a task unto itself.

Hogwarts possessed just under two hundred staircases of varying heights, sizes, and positions, but none of their dimensions seemed fixed from one hour to the next. They moved, twisted, shifted and disappeared seemingly at random, much like the doors. A lot of them were only pretending to be portals, while others led you back where you started like in an M. C. Escher print. The portraits offered little help, for all their personality and ability to speak, because their subjects moved about visiting one another so often, only a few very observant canvas-and-paint witches and wizards could offer an exact description of his or her location relative to the corridors. Apparently, they navigated in two dimensions while out-of-frame.

Hermione would have investigated further, had she the time to consider it, but there wasn't enough time. She only had 15 minutes between classes, except after lunch.

Once she arrived in the correct classroom, she became too engaged in the lecture to notice much else. Against her impulses, she kept her hand down unless no one else in her house volunteered answers, and otherwise added to the notes she had taken during her year-long self-study while she observed her professors outside of their profiles in _Hogwarts: A History._

Meeting Professor Flitwick in person, for example, inspired more questions than answers. The tiny… man? Goblin?

She finally settled on _wizard_. It was easier, and he seemed to self-identify as such above anything else. The wizard seemed to have resulted from the union of a goblin and a human, which made her question much of what she had thought true of her species' evolution.

Despite his fierce photograph from his younger days in duelling circuits, Flitwick seemed a jolly sort, and he gave the impression of one genuinely still excited by his field of study. He started their first Charms lecture with a practical demonstration in which he conducted a flying, dancing, leaping, singing, flashing and colour-changing exhibition of magic-animated objects and spells, earning applause from his students. He then climbed a stack of books behind his desk - she wondered why he didn't just shrink the desk or charm a chair, as he must have done for his place in the Great Hall - and led the class in a lively discussion about magical theory and what separated charms work from other spells, jinxes, hexes, and enchantments.

Professor Binns, on the other hand, appeared just as dull as she feared despite being a ghost with first-hand knowledge and a subject as interesting as goblin rebellions. After twenty minutes of revising her notes to ensure he wasn't deviating from the text, she pulled out her charms homework and finished it by the lecture's end.

Defense Against the Dark Arts, however, thoroughly impressed not only her, but her housemates, many of whom had made unkind remarks about the turbaned former instructor for Muggle Studies.

"Excellent," he smiled after taking a quick headcount, and his thin eyebrows disappeared beneath the bottom of his purple turban. "Everyone's seated, so let's jump in. I'm Professor Quirinus Quirrell, and I shall be guiding you through the basics of magical defense."

He rolled up the voluminous sleeves of his overrobe, fixed them in place at his elbow with an eye-and-loop sewn into the fabric (she resolved to check if her own robes had these, and if not, have them added) and directed his wand to the blackboard, where the chalk spelled out _Magical Defense_.

"Can anyone take a guess as to why I dislike terming this class 'Defense Against the Dark Arts'?" he queried, casting an expectant gaze around.

A Ravenclaw toward the back of the room raised a hand and stood at the professor's nod.

"Is it because the title excludes other potential dangers, sir?" a girl with long, silky black hair surmised.

"Very good, Miss Li," Quirrell said approvingly. "Two points to Ravenclaw. Exactly right. My job is not to teach you how to defend against the Dark Arts, at least not on their own. In fact, very few branches of magic can be called a 'Dark Art.' More often, unscrupulous witches and wizards use neutral spells for their ease, if nothing else, and it is they against whom we must prepare ourselves. Aside from that simple fact, there's also the matter that we live in an era of glorious peace, and so the likelihood of needing to defend against an ill-intentioned wizard isn't as high as it might have been, otherwise.

"The phrase 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' also fails to acknowledge more common threats: animals, both magical and mundane, for one, and second, the possibility of a muggle attacker, whether they be a child or an adult, though this is even rarer, these days. We shall explore basic defense in all these situations, as well as basic personal security, but for today, we'll focus on common spells with potential for inflicting harm."

Hermione's biro whizzed across her notebook. _This_ was the type of instruction she enjoyed most: information beyond the textbook's margins. She could regurgitate text for ages, but it hardly gave her the deep understanding resultant from practice and discussion.

"Mr Malfoy, would you please give us an example of a neutral spell that could be used to cause serious injury?"

The blonde boy pinked blotchily. Hermione suppressed a smirk. Quirrell had clearly noticed him passing notes to Parkinson in the seat behind him.

"Of course, Professor," he answered smoothly just to give himself a moment to think. "What about the hover charm, sir? Certainly a fall from a very great height could hurt someone badly."

"A fair example, though less likely. Basic levitation charms, as a rule, lack precision on their own and require continued casting."

The turbaned wizard added it to the blackboard with a flick of his wand and a warning look for his student.

"A point for your participation. It would have been two had you given me your undivided attention, sooner."

Tracey couldn't quite stop herself from snorting, though she disguised it as a cough into a lacy handkerchief yanked hastily from her skirt pocket.

The professor continued the discussion until they amassed an impressive list of potentially lethal spells on the board, most of which resided in their current texts. It was, frankly, more than a little disturbing to her mind, when she thought about it. They weren't even teenagers, yet, and while she trusted herself and Dahlia to act responsibly, every witch and wizard eleven years old and older had essentially been assigned side-arms. The possibilities of said weapon and the creative examples provided during the discussion seemed not to have been lost on Malfoy, either. He fixed her with a malicious smirk, instantly making her wary.

Then began a quick strategy overview for how to best defend oneself against attacks by an armed witch or wizard, including a practical exercise on how to cast a simplified, directional caterwauling charm designed to deafen as well as gain the attention of anyone within a two-mile radius.

Each shrieking call of her classmates' successfully cast spells made her flinch, despite knowing to expect it. After the second involuntary response, she subtly shifted to put Tracey and Daphne between herself and Malfoy, obscuring his view of her.

It wouldn't do for the boy to gain further ammunition against Slytherin's lone muggleborn.

"Wonderful. I think we've well established your best option is a speedy exit, if you can manage it, or to call for help, at this stage. Only if both fail should you attempt fighting back. We've only a few minutes left in class, today, but I would like to end things with a demonstration, if someone wouldn't mind volunteering as my partner."

He traced a glowing white line around the semicircular space in front of their raised, amphitheatre-like seating.

"Anyone?"

He cast his gaze about, and Malfoy finally raised his hand.

"Excellent! Thank you Mr Malfoy-"

"Actually, Professor," the boy said with an oily smile. "I thought Miss Granger might be the best candidate for your demonstration. After all, she's got first-hand experience."

She knew the innocently presented suggestion had been meant to unsettle her, and her housemates recognised the challenge for what it was. She remained in her seat, though, smiling placidly as the professor turned to her. He frowned slightly, and despite her trepidation, she interpreted the cause as sympathy for her more than anything else.

"Shall we, Miss Granger? I'd be most appreciative."

"If you think I'm suitable, Professor," she demurred even as she rose and descended the steps to join him on the lecturing floor. "I'd be glad to help."

"Thank you, dear girl. Two points to Slytherin. Now-" he stepped away from her and gestured to the very centre of the semicircle. "We're going to playact an attack, and I want you to use any means in your disposal to escape the warded area."

"Yes, sir."

"Ready?"

He raised his wand at her, and she nodded after several steadying breaths.

" _Expelliarmus_!"

She pirouetted. The orange-red light splashed against the marble where she'd stood a moment before, and she drew her wand as she spun to face him, again, shooting off a leg-locker with a whisper.

Quirrell's eyes widened as he shielded against the spell. He followed it up with tripping jinx, but she felt herself lurch forward and tucked, tumbled and rolled - less easily than Dahlia might have, and certainly more painfully than she was used to on the stone floor - but managed it, nonetheless. Without looking, she pointed her wand over her shoulder.

" _LUMOS!"_

Several of her classmates gasped at the blinding light engulfing the space, and when the spots faded from their vision, Hermione stood by the classroom door, not a pleat of her skirt out of place and her hair only a little frizzier than before the short tussle.

The professor beamed at her.

"Oh, very well done, Miss Granger!" he crowed, clapping enthusiastically and leading the others to applaud her, the Ravenclaws more enthusiastically than the Slytherins. "Very well done, indeed."

"Thank you, Professor," Hermione said sweetly, walking back to join him in the ring.

"Ten points for the lady, herself, and another round of applause for our volunteer-"

His class obliged as she returned to her seat, and he went back to standing front and centre.

"And a point to Mr Malfoy for his excellent suggestion. Wonderful! Would anyone be so kind as to describe Miss Granger's strategy for defending herself?"

"She focused on evasion, just like you suggested, Professor," Blaise Zabini, a tall, thin boy at the back of the class answered at his gesture.

"Exactly. What else might she have done?"

"Honestly, I would have probably screamed if someone just came at me like that," Padma Patil admitted without raising her hand. "I don't think I'd have done as well."

Several noises of agreement swept the room.

"Don't discount the value of your voice," Quirrell countered. "A good loud scream tends to get a lot of attention, and it's a perfectly appropriate use of your energy if there's someone nearby who might help you. It's best employed in combination with evasion, however, and caterwauling charm is always preferable."

Instructor and students traded a few more suggestions before the bells tolled, and the first-years hastily copied down their homework assignment before packing their things away and filing out of the room.

"Different ways to 'establish dominance,' indeed," Tracey smirked as they walked, linking her arm with Hermione's on their way toward the Great Hall for an early afternoon tea.

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're referring to," the bushy-haired girl said primly.

"I don't know if I'd call that a display of dominance, Tracey," Daphne hummed to her right. "Although I do think you've put off Malfoy and his crowd, for now. In any case, tolerance has been _en vogue_ as of November 1981, and never more so than now, since your sister accused Fudge of anti-muggleborn prejudice. There's even a new muggle and muggleborn protection act in the works, and Merlin knows Weasley and Bones have been trying to enact something similar for ages. Suddenly everyone's singing songs of acceptance and equality. If one didn't know better, one might think your family had planned a little coup from the start."

"Now you're just massively exaggerating," Hermione laughed. "Anyway, would you two like to join my sister and I in the library after dinner? We've a habit of working on our homework together and studying for the next day's lessons, and we've been duelling for a short while now, too."

The willowy blonde and petite brunette smiled sweetly.

"Of course."

* * *

Author's Notes

Hi y'all. Sorry this one took so long. I had to work out a plot hole issue. I'm pretty sure I should have the next chapter up within the next couple of weeks, but no promises. I had to do some major edits, there.

Please let me know what you think, if you've got a moment. Reviews are very motivating and knowing y'all are engaged keeps me writing with a sense of purpose. Otherwise, I tend to write whenever the mood strikes me, which, unfortunately, hasn't been very often, lately. That, or I'll compose in my head and forget to get it down.


	11. A Lion's Lot

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

A/N: Hi everyone - unless there's a trigger warning I need to include, all ANs and Q/A will be posted at the end of each chapter from here on out. I really love responding to reviews, and since not all of y'all sign in, this is what we're gonna do!

* * *

Chapter Eleven: A Lion's Lot

* * *

Dahlia crossed her arms and glared at the tall, red-haired prefect towering over her as his face darkened from freckle-spattered peach to a deep red that matched the enamel on his badge of office.

"Now see here, Miss Potter," Percy huffed haughtily, his hands on his hips. "I don't think you understand the gravity of your behaviour today. You're the first first-year I've ever had in this house to cost us points so early. You can't just go about mouthing off to every professor you don't agree with."

"For the second time, Mr Weasley, I didn't 'mouth off,'" she said back, struggling not to shout. "I gave a perfectly civilised explanation for what I was doing, and I didn't break any rules. There's nothing in the Charter or Student Code of Conduct banning experimental technique in practical lessons as long as we're supervised by a professor, except in Transfiguration. He had no right-"

Ron Weasley, who had been trying to ignore the crescendoing argument in favour of playing chess against Seamus Finnigan, groaned as one of the Irishman's knight took his rook.

"Oi, come off it already Potter," he snapped.

Dahlia reeled on him. Behind her, Percy threw up his hands and stomped off to deal with less stubborn problems.

"I shall be discussing this with Professor McGonagall at the earliest, Miss Potter," he threw over his shoulder.

She ignored him in favour of addressing his brother.

"Do you have something to say, Ronald?" she bit out.

Every word tasted the way a freshly rewound video tape smelled - electric celery - and her head pounded against the effort of reining in her mounting frustration.

"Yeah," he grunted. "Stop whinging and deal with it. It's your own fault for getting caught cheating."

"It _wasn't_ cheating, though," Neville piped up from his seat on the sofa, lowering his herbology text. "We didn't do anything the book didn't say to do, either, really. Dahlia just showed me a different way to prepare the ingredients. She learned it that way over the summer."

"Look, Neville," the redhead sighed, turning in his armchair. "You shouldn't be so gullible. I saw that potion. It looked done ages before the rest of us even finished chopping up our slugs. There's no way she wasn't cheating, no matter how she phrased it."

Her godbrother's worried face crumpled in a frown.

"Se wasn't lying to me."

"I'd _never_ do that to Neville!"

"Mate, she's a bird," Ron said as if that explained everything, cutting across her furious retort. "Even if she didn't learn how to twist things around from that snake sister of hers, she'd still be good at yanking you around."

The other conversations throughout the Gryffindor common room cut off as Dahlia walked around the seated blonde and leaned over the chessboard, eliciting a complaint from Finnigan and several panicked shouts from the enchanted chessmen. Ron leaned away from her sudden proximity, ears reddening.

"Are you implying something about Hermione, Weasley?" she asked evenly. "Why don't you tell everyone exactly what you mean? We're housemates, aren't we? We should be honest with one another."

Ronald shoved his armchair away from the table and stood.

"Yeah, well, since you asked, I do have something to say," he snapped. "You should pick a bloody side. First, there's what you said on the train, and you spend all night saying they're going to murder your sister in her bed, but then you go sit with them this morning. What's with you?"

Her knuckles cracked from the strength of her grip as she balled her fists at her sides, and the fine hairs dusting her arms and the back of her neck stood on end.

"What's the matter with _you_?" she countered. "Don't tell me if Ginny- That's her name, right? If Ginny got sorted into Slytherin, you'd start ignoring her!"

"Ginny'd go home before she slept with those snakes! She was raised better than that!"

"And what's that supposed to mean?!"

Dahlia couldn't bring herself to care she'd gone from a slightly raised voice to shouting.

She poked him in the chest hard enough to bruise, disturbing Scabbers, who peeked out of Ron's breast pocket. His little pink nose twitched, and small, black, watery eyes seemed to focus in on her face.

"IT MEANS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID!" the boy bellowed, shoving her shoulders.

Dahlia barely budged despite her comparative size.

"SOMEONE WITH SELF-RESPECT AND A SENSE OF RIGHT AND WRONG WOULDN'T STAY IN THAT BLOODY DUNGEON! MAYBE YOU DON'T KNOW GRANGER AS WELL AS YOU WANT TO THINK! EVER CONSIDER THAT?! SHE'S PROBABLY JUST USING YOU FOR YOUR FAT POTTER VAULTS!"

Her knobby fist slammed into his nose, her entire weight behind the blow. A loud crunch reverberated in the bones of her hand, sounding in her ears louder than it should have, and the gangly redhead crumpled with a cry. The smell of rust overwhelmed her senses as hot blood poured from his nostrils. The scarlet stain seeped across his white button-up, spreading and darkening like a time-lapse of a rose in bloom.

She barely registered the room around her: her dormmates gasping and whispering around her, the noise of heavy feet ascending the stairs in search of a prefect, the snap of the portrait closing, the harsh, wet sound of her breath, the prickly feeling of magic running like static electricity over her skin, the clammy pressure of Neville's trembling hand around her left wrist- None of it could break the red-tinged haze surrounding her.

The pale, silvery wood of her aspen wand gleamed starkly against the flood of red under its tip as she ground it into Ron's throat.

She couldn't remember drawing it.

"You keep your bloody mouth shut about my family," she hissed. "Or next time you'll come off a lot worse than a broken nose."

"What is the meaning of this?!"

Dahlia straightened to find Professor McGonagall standing in the entrance, her stern eyes wide and her sharp features drawn into an expression of extreme displeasure. Dahlia couldn't compose a coherent sentence to explain herself. Wryly, she thought the results of their altercation seemed fairly obvious without verbalising it, anyway. Neville's hand loosened around her wrist, though, and the meek boy stepped between her and the furious Scotswoman.

"This is m- my fault, Professor," he said. "Dah-Dahli was just defending me."

She surveyed the room and shook her head.

"While that's an admirable sentiment, Mr Longbottom, you are not responsible for Miss Potter's actions," McGonagall said crisply. "Finnegan-"

The boy looked up at her in surprise.

"I would be most appreciative if you would escort Mr Weasley to the infirmary. Miss Potter, follow me."

Only after several flights of stairs and winding corridors did the fog break enough for Dahlia to feel something other than anger, and she started shaking like a leaf from the adrenaline coursing through her system, its outlet and cause removed. All at once, she felt uncoordinated and dizzy. McGonagall slowed her brisk pace when her charge stumbled and expelled a long breath through her narrow nose.

"Miss Evans-"

Dahlia looked up at the use of the familiar surname - a name she still thought fit her better than 'Potter' - to find the stern professor's gaze softening as the woman watched her student quietly fall to pieces.

"There, now," McGonagall muttered gruffly, putting a light hand on one of the girl's thin shoulders to keep her moving forward. "I won't insult your intelligence by lecturing you. From your expression, I think you're well aware of what you did wrong."

She was quite right in her guess. The moment Dahlia's brain had caught up with the past ten minutes, it had presented her a very clear recollection of Safiya's softly-worded admonition from Diagon Alley. She turned the conversation over in her head and readily admitted she overreacted. A horrifying realisation struck her: while detention might not have warranted a letter home on its own, attacking another student definitely would.

"Yes, Professor," Dahlia muttered miserably.

Her nose stung sharply, and she consciously took deeper breaths to fight back tears.

"May I ask _why_ you struck Mr Weasley?"

The question came more gently than she thought it would.

"I lost my temper," the girl admitted after letting out a shaky exhale. "He had a go at Hermione and my mum and dad, but it wasn't just him. People have been whispering about us all day, saying these awful things, and Snape-"

" _Professor_ Snape," McGonagall corrected lightly. "As much as I understand your reluctance to call him thus, his position, if nothing else, affords him that small courtesy whilst you're a student here."

"Yes, ma'am," she acknowledged glumly. "Professor Snape called Neville an idiot, and then he punished us without even talking to us properly. I've read the Charter very thoroughly, Professor. There's nothing in there about experimental brewing methods so long as it's supervised. Percy didn't care, though, and then Weasley…"

She shrugged, trailing off.

"You get the idea."

"Yes, well," McGonagall hummed with a tight, thin-lipped smile. "I understand the impulse. Fortunately, such inclinations need not rule us. We are witches, after all."

The deputy headmistress' thin fingers tightened subtly on her shoulder. They walked in silence until the stern witch stopped before a statue of a griffin. It cocked its head to the side - an act that should have been impossible for the marble construct - as if to listen.

"Pepper Imps," she pronounced carefully.

The massive stone sentinel folded and tucked its spread wings about its body, and it stepped aside to reveal a revolving spiral staircase.

"After you, Miss Potter."

Her vague feeling of dread solidified and churned in her belly the moment they emerged onto a landing, where an open door guarded an office she would not have mistaken for any other, even after only a brief peek via firecall over the summer.

Spindly tables overflowed with shining silver trinkets. Books towered above her, and portraits snored in gilt frames of every size and design. A great phoenix perched on a delicate stand set before a wide stained glass window, and there, in a throne-like chair behind a beautifully carved mahogany desk, Albus Dumbledore sat waiting for her.

 _They're going to expel me._

"Good evening, Minerva," he greeted his deputy. "Dahlia. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I'm afraid our current circumstances are a wee shy of pleasant, Albus," McGonagall said wryly. "But I shall leave Miss Potter to explain herself, if you don't mind. I have three sets of parents to write, this evening."

Dahlia winced.

"By all means."

Albus nodded his acceptance, the door closed, and the headmaster focused his twinkling gaze on the small witch seated in the oversized armchair in front of his desk.

His whirring, tinkling, humming bits and bobs sounded incredibly loud in the absence of any voice, and Dahlia's anxiety made the air press heavily against her chest.

"Would you like a lemon drop?" Dumbledore finally offered. "Perhaps a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows and a peppermint lolly?"

"Er-" the young Gryffindor blinked and bit her lower lip. "No, thank you, sir. Um… Aren't you going to expel me?"

Dumbledore's overgrown silver eyebrows rose high on his face, nearly disappearing beneath the rim of his tasselled, embroidered cap.

"Whyever would I do that?"

"I punched Ronald Weasley," she admitted, completely nonplussed. "I'm pretty sure I broke his nose."

"Well," he sighed as he crossed his knees, smoothed his subtly gleaming robes, and interlocked his hands in his lap. "While your turn to violence might be a tad worrisome, I don't think you've done lasting harm. Certainly, you haven't misbehaved so badly as to deserve expulsion. Detention, perhaps, but I understand you already have one. Were it to happen again, though..."

He shrugged, but his eyes twinkled merrily at her through his half-moon glasses.

She became aware of an insistent, painful pulse building behind her left eye and leaned back in her seat.

"Aren't you angry? Or terribly disappointed?"

"Not particularly," he smiled. "But I think perhaps you might be feeling thus. Would you like to tell me why?"

She finally identified the odd impression he'd projected. He reminded her of the therapist the Grangers selected for her and Hermione following their horrifying experience. The similarity confused and encouraged her in equal measures.

"It's everything, Professor," she muttered. "I suppose I really haven't been at my best, lately, after-

The amused sparkle in his electric blue eyes winked out, and she didn't bother finishing the sentence. He knew probably better than most, outside of her family.

"Some of it's me. I've had a temper problem since I was little, but a lot of it is this place and everything that happened."

He nodded, and a steaming mug of cocoa floated across the desk to her, seemingly from nowhere. She cradled it between her hands, and despite her initial reservations, salivated at the sweet aroma alone.

"Everything finally felt so perfect," she said, taking a small sip.

Her rigid posture relaxed a little as its warmth slid down her throat and spread through her chest.

"Before December, I was just Evans-the-orphan, and then I met Hermione. I finally understood I wasn't a mutant or a demon, or something. I was learning how to use magic, and I had a friend, a family-"

Dahlia's voice cracked, and she swallowed thickly.

"I think I understand," he murmured sympathetically. "That's quite enough to be getting on with. I imagine this isn't quite what you expected for yourself or your school experience, either."

"Exactly. I'm used to people talking about me, but people are saying the most horrible things about Hermione, too, and she's alone with the Slytherins, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's just too much, right now."

She gulped more of the rich drink and wished she could melt into the velvet armchair like the fluffy marshmallows disappearing into her beverage.

"Dahlia," the old wizard said gently. "I think you'll find Hermione's quite all right where she is. She's well equipped to handle herself, and despite what some might want you to believe, Slytherin is not a home to the scurf of our society. Every student there possesses the capacity for good, and those who've done wrong have attempted nothing beyond what you might see among the Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors – Not since the end of the war. Your mother and your godfather's dedication to her memory saw to that. You and your sister have further opened minds and hearts, too."

She looked up at him doubtfully, and his whiskers twitched around a smile.

"Eleven years can change a lot, but it's not going to wash away centuries of prejudice," she argued. "And statistically, sir, I'm sure you're right, but you have to admit there's a rather large concentration of bigots in that particular house."

He steepled his fingers in his lap as he considered her.

"An excellent argument, if a bit pessimistic," he hummed. "Would it make you feel better if she were moved?"

The girl scowled at her cocoa.

"Honestly, I think I'd still be upset if she were a Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, instead. I just can't stand the thought of someone having a go at her and not being able to help."

Dumbledore tilted his head in a movement not unlike how his familiar might and frowned.

"Was such an occurrence a commonality in her previous experience?"

"Kids pick on girls who don't care about fashion and boybands even when they're not clever and obsessively academic. She's that, plus she's pretty and well-off. She doesn't realise how jealous and angry she makes shallow people feel, and she's so nice, she's an easy target."

The wizard nodded and unwrapped another round, yellow sweet.

"Has Hermione intimated any concern since her sorting?" he finally asked.

Dahlia's brow furrowed in frustration as she examined the headmaster's placid face.

"No, but-"

"Have you witnessed anyone mistreating her?" he cut across her gently.

"Not yet," she said stubbornly.

"Have you asked how Hermione feels about all this?"

"Yes, but how can she give me a proper answer if we can hardly see each other, anymore?"

Dumbledore chuckled, and although Dahlia sorely wanted to resent his apparent amusement at the situation, the kind, light-hearted sound of it only relaxed her a little more.

"I see a lot of Lily Evans in you," he grinned wistfully. "She was just as stubborn, and equally protective of the people she loved."

She smiled despite herself.

"Really? We're alike?"

A warmth completely unrelated to the cocoa's effects spread through her chest. Sirius spoke about her often, of course, but as much as he respected and loved her mother, between him and Remus, most of what she'd heard about her parents revolved around James Potter. She understood their reasoning: she hadn't known who her father was, so her emotions concerning him were more ambiguous compared to what she felt for Lily. For as long as she could remember, though, she'd wanted to feel close to the woman who birthed her and kept her, despite having just reached her adulthood, herself.

"Very much so," Dumbledore hummed, his smile gentling as he unwrapped another citrusy sweet.

"Sometimes, life is what we make it," he mused after thoughtfully sucking the sherbet lemon. "There are other times in which there's only so much we can control, but still, I think you might find more often than not, a little perspective makes all the difference."

She didn't have anything to say to that advice, so she sipped more cocoa.

"In any case," the headmaster smiled and straightened to write something out on a scrap of parchment pulled from one of his many drawers. "I think you've plenty to ruminate upon, and in light of your emotionally taxing day, I think we'll move your detention with our illustrious potions master to Thursday evening. No additional punishment will be assigned for your altercation with young Ronald, on the condition you apologise. From what the portraits told me, he was due a talking-to, so I think that sufficient enough. I would also recommend you write your parents to inform them of your state-of-mind. Minerva usually sends her owls shortly after dawn, and I think your family would prefer to hear such things directly from the source."

"Er-" Dahlia blinked, confused at the entire conversation but unwilling to question such a lenient outcome. "Thank you Professor. I'll send Hedwig right away."

* * *

Her letter arrived at the Granger home by nightfall thanks to Hedwig's magically enhanced speed, and after Dahlia returned to her dormitory after a satisfyingly uneventful and surprisingly pleasant study session with Hermione and her dormmates, her mirror burned hot in her pocket. Ensconced behind the thick velvet curtains shielding Dahlia's four-poster from the others in her shared bedroom, the first-year sat in the centre of her bed, pulled her knees to her chest, and affixed the mirror to her headboard just below eye-level with a weak sticking charm. It took a few tries to make it stay without flopping onto the pillows, but when it finally seemed secure, she settled in for what she felt sure would be a very long and painful lecture on proper behaviour.

"Hello Padfoot."

At the pass phrase, the gleaming mirror darkened, and her reflection disappeared to reveal not Sirius, but Safiya Granger.

Dahlia blanched.

"Hi, Mum," she murmured.

"Hello, darling."

Safiya's lovely, heart-shaped face creased faintly about the corners of her eyes and mouth, not with anger or disappointment, as Dahlia had expected, but in worry, sadness, and deep affection.

The floodgate broke, and she buried her face in her folded arms, crying for all she was worth while her mother tried to soothe her with soft words and comforting sounds.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," she blubbered. "I just snapped, and-"

"Shhh," Safiya cooed. "There's nothing the matter with you, my love. You've been through more than anyone should have in order to survive, and you're under a lot of stress. It's all right. None of us are angry-"

"You should be," Dahlia sobbed miserably. "I wanted to hurt him. I was going to jinx him, and he was already down and bleeding. If it weren't for Neville-"

"Oh, darling, the doctor told us recovery would take time, didn't she?"

She waited for the girl to nod and scrub away the tears glistening on her blotchy cheeks.

"You just need to give yourself time. You're safe. Hermione's safe. No one's going to hurt her under all the professors' noses, and I'm sure she'll come to you if she needs your help," Safiya reasoned. "Everything you're feeling is perfectly natural-"

"I just need to be kinder to myself," Dahlia finished, reciting her therapist's favourite advice. "And think things through before turning molehills into mountains out of panic."

It was an argument she'd heard many times since she left in St Mungos. The words were a lot harder to keep in mind in the middle of things, though, especially with white-hot fury coursing through her veins and magic bubbling under her skin, barely restrained.

"Sweetheart, would you please do me a favour?" Safiya said once her daughter's sniffles softened and eyes dried.

Dahlia nodded.

"I put a pair of journals in your trunk like the one you kept for Dr Pathapati over the summer," she related. "I'd very much like you to keep up with daily entries, even if you just put a couple words down, and send one to her every week. She told me she can take owls at home on weekends. Can you do that for me, dear?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Thank you. Now, Sirius is getting tired of holding the mirror for me, so if you have a moment, I'm sure he'd like to speak with you."

The image in the glass disc swirled sickeningly for a moment, and her godfather's angular, goateed face came into view.

"I can still see you, Saf!" he called, looking reproachfully into the distance. "Go do mum-things. I want a private word."

She heard Mrs Granger's voice somewhere outside of the mirror's view. Without the enchanted device aimed at her, her voice seemed to warp and echo strangely.

"You're in _my_ kitchen! Go upstairs if you want privacy. I can't very well put the kettle on from the sitting room."

Sirius sighed melodramatically, then the creak of his footfalls on stairs and the click of a door closing sounded in the background.

"Sorry about that," he grinned at her, his face framed by a familiar bookcase behind him. "How are you holding up, Prongslet?"

"You don't have to pretend you didn't read it," Dahlia mumbled glumly, unsticking her mirror in favour of laying on her stomach and propping it up against her pillows. "Not great."

"Yeah, well," she shrugged unrepentantly. "Your mum already said everything that needed saying about the rest, but I wanted to tell you not to let Snivellus get you down. The greasy bat's been a menace since the start. He used to hex James in the back at every opportunity."

Dahlia couldn't help snorting.

"Somehow, I think he might have had it coming, if anything Remus says is true. Didn't Dad have a bad habit of throwing spells around at random, just because he could?"

"Of course, but that doesn't excuse Snapey from being a royal wanker," he countered. "And your dad grew out of it. Snape obviously hasn't."

"Do you really think that's what his problem is?" the girl complained. "He hated James Potter, so it's open season on his kid?"

Her godfather grimaced.

"I wish I could say otherwise, but quite possibly, yes."

She groaned, and the teasing tilt of his mouth and mischievous glint in his pale grey eyes faded somewhat.

"Actually, Moony said something a bit ago that has me worried. He implied Snape might have had something to do with your kidnapping. He was acting a bit cagey about it - Actually, his exact words were along the lines of 'I'm not going to regurgitate dog shite' - But he didn't deny the man was involved. I want you to be careful around him. He was a Death Eater before he worked for Dumbledore."

She nodded tiredly.

"All right, Padfoot. I will."

He smiled at her affectionately, and Dahlia felt the same warmth flood her that always buoyed her when Safiya made that expression.

"Good. Right. On that note, I'm also sending you some things your mum definitely wouldn't approve of, just in case you get the urge to cause some havoc elsewhere, or, you know, if any of Hermione's dormmates have a go at her."

The wizard's explanation of things-her-mum-wouldn't-approve of had her laughing until her sides hurt, and by the time she curled up under her covers, she felt lighter than she had in ages.

* * *

Between her family's advice and Hermione's sympathy and exasperated teasing, Dahlia quickly moved past the misery of her first two days at Hogwarts and began to tentatively enjoy herself. The whispers persisted worse than before, of course, but when word reached her of Hermione's stellar performance in Defense, she finally allowed herself to relax. Their year mates, at the very least, seemed too wary of the inexplicably muggleborn Slytherin to try anything, for now.

Dahlia's housemates treated her a bit coolly after her very public altercation with the youngest Weasley, except for Fred and George, interestingly enough. The third years greeted her the morning following the Ron Incident, as she'd dubbed it internally, on bended knee at the foot of the girls dormitory stairs, each with a Filibuster's Wet-Start Firework in hand, offered up like a sword.

She stopped on the bottom step, wide-eyed and a little alarmed at the sight of the castle's most revered and hated troublemakers posed before her. From previous experience with vengeful types, she immediately assumed she'd earned the wrong boys' ire.

"Our lady," one began. "Defier of prefects and wielder of fists-"

"We wish you pledge our blades-"

"Fireworks-"

"Wands-"

"Mischief-making-"

"Pilfery-"

"And general services to your cause," the second finished, still kneeling.

Dahlia blinked.

"Er-" her emerald gaze flicked between the two distrustfully. "Why?"

They rose in tandem - it was a bit uncanny, really - and looped an arm through each of hers, lifting her easily and escorting her to the most comfortable and coveted armchair in the common room, right in front of the fire.

"Because, no one's ever managed to annoy our brothers more than us on any single day since we were…" he frowned and looked to his twin. "What were we, George? Seven?"

"Thereabouts," the other shrugged. "That, and we might have pressed Neville for information about the fight, seeing as our ickle baby brother ended up in the hospital wing-"

"And we could really benefit from the type of knowledge you apparently have in that ickle firstie head of yours," Fred admitted. "See, we're fair at potions, but we could be a lot better."

"What Neville described led us to believe you could give us a hand."

Dahlia looked askance between their surprisingly sincere expressions and crossed her arms.

"You're not having me on?" she hedged. "This isn't some trap to get revenge for Ronald?"

They both made exaggerated gestures of affront.

"We'd never!"

She considered them a moment longer, and her eyes narrowed shrewdly.

"What's in it for me?"

Both smirked, strongly reminding her of sharks.

"Aside from not becoming the victim of a creatively designed revenge?"

The girl shrugged, completely unfazed.

"I wouldn't care, really. I'd sort of deserve it. I mean, your brother's a berk, but I still shouldn't have hit him."

They both seemed surprised at that.

"Huh," George mused. "Well. What do you want, then?"

She thought about it a while before grinning.

"If you prank the Slytherins, you can't mess with Hermione or any of her friends," she said firmly. "It'll help her cement things if they know she's got allies on the outside."

She imagined that wasn't something the other snaked could usually claim.

"Actually, I'll help you mess with anyone as much as you want, so long as it's really, really obvious Hermione's considered untouchable. And we get revenge on anyone who messes with her and Neville, too, if anyone ever does, even if it's a Gryffindor who did it. I reserve the right to request pranks at any time, too."

She hoped the loiterers throughout the common room were eavesdropping. Fred and George exchanged a long look, and after a series of eyebrow wiggles, minute cheek-twitches, they shared a shrug, grinned broadly, and grasped her hands, shaking them vigorously.

"We get veto power for any requests, but-"

"It's a deal!"

"Deal," she agreed. "Now, do you know whether Ronald went to breakfast already? I'm supposed to apologize for cracking his conk."

They offered her their arms, again, and a moment later, she found herself in an exact mirror of her own dormitory, except, in two days of occupation, the first-year boys' dorm featured clothing, books, and other belongings strewn over the floor, chairs, and desks. Ronald lay sprawled on his back, arms and legs splayed, snoring for all he was worth.

"Er-"

The twins nodded at her encouragingly. She got the feeling they were blocking the door to prevent her exit as well as others' entry.

"Weasley?" Dahlia prodded Ron's naked shoulder gingerly. "Weasley, wake up. I want to talk to you."

He groaned but didn't stir. A pink nose poked out from his pillowcase, however, followed by the small, pointed face of his fat grey rat. She grimaced at the rodent. Growing up muggle had instilled in her a certain aversion to the creatures. They weren't the cleanest animals, and though she knew magical versions likely had a resistance to their usual parasites - ticks, fleas, worms, etcetera - just like magicals had a resistance to a host of mundane diseases, she couldn't help feeling disgusted at the thought of having a rat sleeping in her bed.

"Weasley!" she said a little louder, prodding him more insistently.

"Wha-?"

He rolled over and blinked up at her blearily. She knew the moment he recognised her. His face reddened, and he jerked the sheets up to his neck, sending Scabbers the rat tumbling in his master's effort to preserve his modesty. Dahlia barely resisted laughing, restraining herself to a mere eye-roll.

"Sorry. I just wanted to talk to you before I went down for breakfast," she said quietly. "I want to apologise for last night."

His fiery brows drew together.

"Really?"

"Yes," she said a little tersely. "I still think you're an arse for talking about my sister - And if you do it again, I'll probably find some other way to punish you, even if I don't hit you - But I shouldn't have hurt you like that."

Ron glanced over her head to his brothers.

"We're just chaperoning, Ronniekins," George said innocently.

At least, Dahlia felt pretty sure he was George.

"Also, if you don't accept her apology, it might put a damper on our working relationship, so do get on with it."

"Right," the boy mumbled, still scarlet. "I don't want to know. Accepted, I guess, Potter. Water under the bridge, and all that. Now, do you mind?"

She frowned.

"You don't have anything else to say to me?" she prompted.

"What? No," he eyed her distrustfully, still holding the sheets to his neck to hide his pale chest. "Why would I?"

"Oh, Ronniekins-" one of the twins groaned.

"You're so thick," the other sighed.

"It's a wonder you figure out how to put your shoes on by yourself."

They turned to follow Dahlia as she eagerly quit the room, glad to have the awkward and somewhat frustrating encounter behind her.

The remainder of the week passed quickly, after that. Dahlia loved her classes, despite having learned the majority of the content, already, but two stood out among the others: History, for its sleep-inducing boredom, and Defense, for its utter brilliance.

None of her introductory lessons in magic, however, compared to the final class of the week: _Flying_.

The moment lunch ended, she leapt up from her seat to pull a pale, nervous Neville behind her to the Slytherin table. To no one's surprise, Hermione had a book open in front of her, her meal half-forgotten while she pursued the _Beginning Flyer's Guide._ Dahlia couldn't help but smile.

"Good afternoon, Potter," Daphne Greengrass greeted from her seat opposite Hermione. "Are you joining us for lunch?"

"No, thank you," Dahlia smiled tightly.

She still wasn't sure how she felt about the statuesque blonde. She couldn't talk herself into trusting the smoothly courteous girl. She smiled like a politician.

"I've finished, already. I just wondered if Neville and I could walk with you to the training grounds, whenever you're ready."

Hermione looked over her shoulder and smiled at the sight of her sister's excited face. She practically bounced in place, Neville's sleeve still clutched in her left hand, while she nervously surveyed the rest of Slytherin house.

"Of course," she sighed, grimacing as she tucked her book into the bag beside her. "I'm finished, anyway. Greengrass? Davis?"

Her dormmates exchanged a glance and a subtle shrug.

"You go ahead, Granger. We'll catch you up, later. I imagine your sister rather wants you to herself."

Hermione beamed, and Dahlia took the effort to offer the Slytherins a smile.

"Thanks. We'll see you in a bit."

With that, she linked arms with her sister, tightened her grip on Neville, and led both bodily from the hall and onto the grounds.

As magnificent as Hogwarts looked while they crossed the lake by night, Dahlia thought it just as incredible by daylight. The sky shone a lovely, clear blue dotted by fluffy white clouds, and the sun felt warm on her face and hands. Sweet, crisp notes of wet grass and wildflowers underlaid by the earthier smell of soil filled her nose, and she couldn't help but grin at her best friend and godbrother as they struggled to keep up with her pace.

"I'm so excited!" she crowed. "We're going to learn how to fly. _Fly_ , Hermione! We're going to laugh in the face of physics and defy the laws of gravity!"

Neville shuddered, but dutifully followed the ecstatic girl toward the flat stretch of lawn between the north tower and the quidditch pitch. The sight of the gleaming goal posts at the bottom of the hill made him pale.

"I've seen injuries, though," he mumbled, pulling a glass orb from his pocket just to have something to occupy his hands.

The white smoke within turned scarlet, and he sighed. Sullenly, he wondered what purpose the Remembrall supposedly served when it couldn't tell him what he'd forgotten.

"Quidditch players fall and crash all the time. It can be really dangerous. I'm bad enough on flat ground."

As if to emphasise his point, he trod on a divot in the path and pitched forward toward the gravel. Dahlia snatched the glass ball out of the air before it could shatter on the gravel path. Hermione caught his arm just in time, and he smiled gratefully at the equally disquieted Slytherin, who had begun, with great effort, to finger-comb and work her massively bushy hair into a messy braid.

Seeing her struggle, Dahlia helpfully skipped back a few steps to take the elastic from Hermione's hand and gently finished off the fishtail before passing Neville's gift back to him.

"Thanks."

Hermione linked arms with her sister again and held her there while they continued on, forcing her to match her own stride.

"Don't tell me you're scared, too," Dahlia complained. "It's going to be wicked."

"I have a healthy appreciation for gravity," the taller girl said primly. "And a better sense of self-preservation, thank you. If humans were meant to fly, we would have evolved to have wings."

"Maybe magic's evolution's solution," Dahlia teased before effecting an exaggerated announcer's tone. "Can't grow wings? Well, here's the brainpower and the magic to do it, anyway."

Hermione smiled.

"You're absurd."

" _You're_ absurd," Dahlia countered. "C'mon. At worst, the professor spells the ground squishy or something. I saw something for that in the _Standard Book of Spells_."

" _Spongify_ ," Hermione provided. "I suppose that would be a proper application, but how ever would you control the area of effect?"

"Perhaps we can ask Professor Flitwick."

Neville looked between the two bemusedly. He had been exposed to their academic interest increasingly over the last weeks of summer, but it still amazed him how rapidly they returned to their favorite topic of conversation: the workings of magic.

"I wonder how the brooms are made to fly," Hermione mused aloud. "I know we read a bit about the spells involved in the enchantment, but I still don't understand how they're made to 'stick,' as it were. I didn't see enchanting on the Hogwarts curriculum, either. Do you think it's an advanced subject?"

Dahlia hummed thoughtfully.

"Maybe," she hedged. "But the Weasley twins have enchanted things, I'm sure. Where would they learn it if not here?"

"Er-" Neville interjected shyly. "Ron's oldest brother's a cursebreaker. He did your wards, right? They have to know how to undo enchantments."

The girl nodded, and her eyes widened as she looked over the boy's shoulder. He turned and gulped at the sight of twenty brooms neatly lined up in two rows. Dahlia promptly wiggled out of Hermione's grasp, rushed to pick one up, and turned it over in her hands.

"Look, it's got runes!"

Hermione went to her side and rummaged in her bag for a moment before pulling out a small magnifying glass.

"Dagaz, algiz-" she paused. "I don't know what that is. I don't think it's Futhark or Elder Futhark."

At their insistence, Neville shuffled forward and squinted at the squiggle.

"I dunno," he said lamely. "Sorry, I was never very good at languages. My tutor said I didn't have the mind for it. He said I didn't have the mind for much, actually."

His round face crumpled, and the girls exchanged a confused and sympathetic look.

"Nev, you've memorised the names, properties, and care for I-don't-know-how-many magical and mundane plants," the Hermione said gently.

"You've got a great mind," Dahlia firmly agreed, straightening to brush the grass from the knees of her dark grey stockings after jotting down the unfamiliar script.

He blushed and mumbled a soft thank-you, and the witches smiled.

The trio passed the last few minutes before the warning bell laughing and talking about their day. Dahlia did her best to distract the others from their fears, and Hermione caught Dahlia up on her classes and her life thus far in Slytherin, which inevitably lead to the subject of potions and its taciturn instructor.

"Oh!" she whirled around to face her sister. "How did your detention with Professor Snape go?"

She swallowed down the brief feeling of frustration and confusion at the reminder of her horrible Monday and the ensuing punishment.

Dahlia obediently reported to Professor Snape's office 7 p.m. following dinner on Thursday. The door had opened silently before she could knock. She stared into the shadowed room, took a deep breath, and marched across the threshold.

The door slammed behind her, and she barely stopped herself from jumping.

"Potter. I'd begun to wonder whether you would arrive, at all."

The girl frowned and tugged the pocket watch from her waistcoat. According to the timepiece, she had presented herself almost five minutes early. A flash of annoyance burned in her throat, but she straightened her shoulders and bit back the protest at the forefront of her mind.

"I'm sorry, Professor. I must have forgotten to wind my watch last night."

Dahlia quietly walked up to the professor's desk. Snape raised his dark, cool stare to examine her critically. A grimace curled his thin, waxy lips as he pushed a lock of limp, greasy-looking hair behind an ear.

"You will be re-brewing your potion, Miss Potter, after which you shall prepare ingredients for me," he drawled, gesturing to a series of jars and pouches arranged in a tray on the corner of his workspace."

"Thank you, Professor. Do you have a preference for where I work?"

The pained expression returned to his face for a brief moment before disappearing again behind the derisive smirk.

"Wherever you please, just don't bother me until you've finished."

"Yes, Professor."

Dahlia made an about-face and returned to the desk she normally occupied in class and carefully set up her burner, a magical analog to the muggle Bunsen burner that used an enchantment to produce fire instead of gas. Once she had adjusted it to the correct temperature, she began parsing out her ingredients. The girl barely withheld a sigh of frustration as she chopped, ground, minced and massaged the different components of her boil-curing stew.

She still couldn't quite wrap her head around how it all worked. She knew the magical properties of the ingredients themselves had something to do with how a potion came into being, but she desperately wanted to understand what made them so. It couldn't be as easy as 'dragon dung,' as her godbrother had suggested. Logic, and every chemistry lesson she'd ever participated in, dictated the materials they worked with shouldn't homogenise except with the assistance of something caustic, or under heat unachievable by normal means.

Yet homogenise they did, even without any wand-waving, though it took quite a lot longer than when she prepped her ingredients to her mother's specifications.

With a frown, she lifted her beaker of water to begin brewing the assignment before her.

"Potter, what are you doing?"

Dahlia's grip slipped slightly, and she almost dropped the vessel clutched between her fingers in her haste to meet her professor's gaze.

"Yes, Professor?"

"What are you doing?"

"Er... Starting my boil-curing potion?"

The instructor raised a dark, heavy eyebrow.

"Have we decided the text's instructions are superior, after all?" he asked softly, each word laced with biting sarcasm.

She put the beaker back down and frowned.

"No, Professor. I trust my mother's research," she said evenly. "I was just under the impression you preferred we brew it according to the listed instructions."

Snape's black eyes searched her face for a long moment. She stared back unblinkingly.

"For you to do otherwise while in my class would be foolish."

Dahlia felt certain she had never experienced so many headaches in so short a time. Ever since she learned her real name, they'd become more frequent, and in the past week, she counted at least six instances in which her body rebelled against her with the insistent, sharp throb over her left eye.

The way he watched her went against everything she knew of the man. Absent were his cold sneer and brooding demeanour, leaving behind a blank slate. He didn't exude disdain, but he also failed to express any indication of kindness in the hold of his heavy, dark eyebrows and waxy face.

"We're not in class right now, professor," she pronounced neutrally after careful consideration.

"And despite your dearest hopes, I'm sure, and feeble attempts at subtlety, I am not blind when we _are_ ," he drawled with a put-upon sigh.

The girl felt an unpleasant, rapid sinking in her stomach. She had not bluffed when she suggested preparing their ingredients before class, and Neville had helped her on Tuesday night to do just that after his own miserable detention.

He had ended up in the Hospital wing after the potion exploded in his face.

During their Wednesday lesson, she and her godbrother had gone through the motions, altering their timing and shifting around ingredients as if working within the conventional brewing instructions between covertly tipping pre-liquified and altered ingredients into their bubbling cauldron. They had turned in their samples without incident, and managed to go the whole hour without receiving the scathing criticism of their dour instructor.

She had thought they got away with it.

"Well?" Snape hummed. "Your time with me is currently limited to a rather lenient period, Miss Potter. I suggest you return to your work if you do not wish to extend your sentence. I expect you to adhere to the standard you've achieved thus far."

"Yes, Professor," Dahlia answered hesitantly and looked back at her materials.

The potions master made no comment for the next thirty minutes, during which his student completed the boil remedy with her mother's proven method. She finished quickly, and received the tray of raw ingredients and a list for her efforts. When each herb and object lay in its appropriately labelled jar or box, the professor instructed her to work on homework assignments. She might have lingered when the clock struck nine, but one annoyed glance from the man had her mumbling 'good evening' and rushing for the door.

Her mixed feelings regarding the professor and potions in general persisted throughout the remainder of the night, and only the distraction of Flying did much to quell the numerous questions generated by Severus Snape's duplicitous behaviour.

"Miss Granger, return to your housemates."

Dahlia looked up in surprise to find herself bracketed by ten other Gryffindors, opposite which the Slytherins (save Hermione, who had lingered in between her sister and Neville) stood beside some of the shabbiest brooms she'd ever laid eyes on.

Hermione hastily joined Daphne and Tracey with a nervous smile for Dahlia, and the sharp-eyed witch standing before them with her hands on her hips introduced herself as Madam Hooch. The lesson began with the very basics, the first of which involved calling one's broom.

Dahlia briefly pondered the necessity of this step, though she supposed it was good practice for wandless magic, which she had observed fairly often in Diagon Alley during her family's visits there. Sirius frequently lit his cigarettes with a click of his fingers using a wandless fire charm, too.

Safiya hated the habit. Dan thought it was cool. His wife believed the he his admiration of the wizard's refined punk-ish aesthetic and devil-may-care attitude blinded him to their mutual repugnance toward any and all tobacco products.

Madam Hooch continued their introduction to flight by demonstrating the appropriate way to grip a broom. Dahlia took particular satisfaction from the coach's repeated correction of Draco Malfoy's hand placement. At one point in the short exchange, the blonde very loudly declared he had been flying that way all his life, and Hooch quickly countered his boast with a sharp reprimand.

"When you've been training and overseeing quidditch veterans and broom-flight neophytes alike for upwards of twenty years, _then_ you may contradict my instructions, Mr Malfoy. Until that day, I suggest you do as you're told, unless you'd rather not fly during your tenure at Hogwarts."

She suppressed a smile at the embarrassed, angry flush on the unpleasant boy's face. Weasley, who had taken a spot at the very end of their side (as far from Dahlia as possible) snickered outright.

"Right, now that we've got that out of the way," she said with another glare at the boy. "We can make our first attempt at flying. Everyone, mount your brooms."

The instructor raised a strangely shaped whistle over her head for everyone to see.

"On my mark, I want you all to push off gently, hover for a few moments, and land, again. You are to remain in formation. You will land when I whistle twice in succession. Anyone in the air after the third whistle will find themselves in detention. Am I clear?"

They chorused an affirmative, and she raised the brass instrument to her lips.

Dahlia gripped her broom tighter, watching Hooch for the signal, but before the woman could give her approval, Neville shot into the air with a shriek. Her heart raced at the sight of him climbing higher, becoming smaller and smaller until he seemed just a speck against the sunny sky.

"Neville!"

"Mr Longbottom!" Hooch shouted after him, eyes wide as she whipped her wand out. "Mr Longbottom, lean forward gently, and-"

Dahlia screamed along with most of her classmates as his unconscious body abruptly plummeted from its position hundreds of feet in the air. A loud, echoing _GONG!_ sounded as the broom, alleviated of its burden, rocketed into one of the bronze gargoyles perched on the north tower's ramparts, followed by a sickening, woody _CRACK!_ Meanwhile, Neville's continued his free-fall toward the hard ground below.

For the second time that week, the smell and taste of ozone flooded her senses. She vaguely registered Hermione gripping her sleeve. She couldn't look at her. She couldn't pull her gaze away from the disaster unfolding in front of them.

" _ARRESTO MOMENTUM!"_ Madam Hooch bellowed, pointing her wand at the boy.

His fall slowed observably, but not enough to save him from death should he hit the ground from that height.

" _WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!"_ Dahlia called desperately.

The spell went wide, but Hermione mimicked her attempt, both casting in rapidfire in hopes of slowing him.

Meanwhile, Madam Hooch sprinted forward and pointed at the ground below the boy's too-small shadow.

" _Exairetika mollis!"_

A shimmer encompassed the area. Dahlia forced herself to keep her eyes open and continue trying. She could make out the crest on Neville's robes. She felt helpless. Her heart raced, and her wand felt hot in her hand. A few of her spells seemed to hit, but at such a distance, the feeling of resistance emanating from her focus - like a fish on the end of a line - dissipated abruptly.

The first years' voices rose in a horrified crescendo. Hermione turned her face into Dahlia's shoulder.

 _No, no, no, no, no, no!_

Every moment she'd spent with the boy, only a handful of days, really, sped through her mind at blinding speed. Her vision blurred, and her breath burned in her throat.

 _Useless_ \- _Helpless- Weak-_

"Dahlia?"

She pushed Hermione's arms away. Her head hurt. Every muscle ached as if she'd been hit by a lorry.

"Dahli?!"

Hermione's voice sounded far away, distorted as if shouted underwater. Cold numbness slid from the top of her spine to her toes.

She didn't want to lose anyone else.

She refused to lose anyone else.

Without making a conscious decision, she mounted her broom again, and before Hermione could stop her, she rocketed into the air.

Her jumbled, disjointed thoughts cleared. The suffocating bands across her chest loosened. The air whipped too fast past her ears to hear anything, and the features of the wizards and witches below blurred rapidly with each foot she ascended, but despite it all, she felt elated.

This was something she needed no instruction in. The horrible prickling sensation of her magic fighting for release eased as warmth flowed through her limbs, making her fingertips tingle. She flattened herself against the rickety old school broom, urging it faster, ignoring the sting of her hair whipping her cheeks.

Neville hit the shimmering expanse of grass before she could reach him, bouncing high into the air again. She barely registered Hooch's shouted curse as she darted after his limp body. She leaned left, hooked her knee and elbow tightly around the broom's slim shaft, and just as she drew level with him, swung to grab a fistful of his robes. The broomstick lurched abruptly, losing a little altitude, but remained aloft.

Her hearing returned, and she grimaced at the sounds of Hermione and Hooch's combined screeches below.

"C'mon, Nev, wake up!" she grunted, her palm and fingers burning with the effort of maintaining their death grip on his collar. " _Wake up!"_

To her relief, he gave a soft groan which rose into a high-pitched squeal as the boy registered his position.

"Neville!"

He shook violently, kicking and straining her arm. She felt her shoulder protest, the ligaments stretched to their capacities.

"NEVILLE! Shut up and grab the broom!"

He obeyed without question, reaching up and digging his fingers into the sleeve of her robes and hoisting himself up with her assistance.

The moment he steadied, she began lowering them gently to the grass. Finally, gratefully, they both rolled onto the lawn.

"MISS POTTER!"

"DAHLIA! NEVILLE!"

Both cringed at the sound of the instructor and Hermione's enraged voices. Dahlia helped her godbrother scramble to his feet and squared her shoulders while he cradled one of his wrists.

"Are you all right?" she frowned, and he whimpered again.

"I think it's broken."

"Sorry," Dahlia winced. "I didn't get to you in time."

"WHAT IN NIMUE'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING, YOUNG LADY?!"

The girl glanced around at her housemates rushing over the hill, Hooch bellowing at her. She hadn't really been thinking at the time, but didn't think that would go over very well.

"Neville's wrist is broken!" she said instead, gently nudging the boy's elbow to present the injury. "

"We _will_ be discussing this later, Miss Potter!" Madam Hooch snapped even as she wrapped an arm around Neville's shoulders to march him toward the castle.

"That isn't necessary, Rolanda."

Dahlia stiffened and tried to melt into the line of her classmates unsuccessfully as McGonagall rounded the greenhouses. Her stern gaze focused immediately on the dark-haired witch.

"Mum's going to kill me," she muttered.

Hermione finally fought her way through her classmates and gave her sister's hand an almost painful squeeze.

"Probably," she agreed shakily. "You're mad, you know."

"Yeah," Dahlia said miserably, passing Hermione the broom still clutched in her hands.

She very much doubted she would be given hot cocoa in response to her behaviour _this_ time. Still, she obediently fell into step behind the professor, following the stoic woman from the sunny grounds and back into the castle's cool corridors.

* * *

Author's Notes

Take a minute to review, if you have one to spare. I write for my own enjoyment, but I'd be lying if I said seeing the New Review message in my inbox didn't make me inordinately happy.

My heartfelt thanks to all you folks who always leave me a note and to those who've faved or followed. Y'all keep me typing more often than y'all know.

Q/A

ultraclosetfan - Thanks for your question! Your first guess was right. Quirrell's not the bumbling blubbering buffoon usually depicted because he's not Quirrelmort. He's just a former Muggle Studies teacher with a passion for defense. The turban was gifted to him by someone he met on his travels, if I remember right. Kind of like Billy Gibbons' fuzzy beanie.

1381 - Full disclosure: I have a serious problem with Ron as the best friend because of my personal impatience for B.S. and repeated immaturity, even if he does grow up a little over the course of the original canon. I will try very, very hard to deal with him as fairly as I can, based on my interpretation of his character. As to twinspeak: sorry, but it's going to happen whenever twins are involved. As a whole, though, I try very hard not to bash for bashing's sake. I'm sure you'll let me know if I start to slip.


	12. Balancing the Books

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Twelve: Balancing the Books

* * *

Dahlia's head-of-house stopped outside of Professor Flitwick's classroom after a very brisk walk through the castle that left her rubbing a stitch in her side. Part of her mind protested the numerous staircases on principle. She considered herself extremely fit compared to most witches her age and still felt winded. She couldn't imagine how someone differently-abled might navigate the obscenely uncooperative corridors.

"Filius, would you mind if I borrowed Wood for a moment?" McGonagall asked in a somewhat strained voice.

The girl shivered at who or what 'wood' might be. The Charter very clearly allowed the use of corporal punishment, and while she'd received her fair number of smacks in foster homes (not including the occasional punch or shove by one of her peers), she didn't relish a repeat of the experience.

Still, she internally admitted to overreacting. Neville could have been hurt a lot worse, but likely would not have died, the logical part of her brain supplied. Madam Hooch had said it herself, as had Dahlia on the way to class: the witch was an expert. She would have managed fine on her own. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to regret her actions and resolved to stoically accept whatever punishment McGonagall thought necessary if it spared her expulsion.

A chair scraped the wooden floor beyond the classroom door, and a moment later, a stocky boy with heavy eyebrows joined them. Dahlia vaguely recognised him as an upperclassman of her house, but could not conceive the necessity of his presence.

"Good afternoon, Professor," he greeted. "Is something the matter?"

He looked between the witches curiously, but Professor McGonagall only gave him a brusque gesture to follow. No one uttered a word until she ushered them into a tastefully appointed office and directed them to sit in the hard, straight-backed chairs positioned before her desk. She took a seat in the burgundy wing-back opposite, and her sternly held mouth broadened into an almost feral smile.

Dahlia shrunk back in her seat beneath the intensity of her stare.

"What's this about, Professor?" Wood asked a little nervously.

The woman's gaze shifted, and her grin widened.

"Mr Wood, this is Dahlia Potter, your new seeker. Miss Potter, meet our Quidditch captain, Oliver Wood."

"Er-" Dahlia grasped the boy's extended hand, which he shook enthusiastically after the professor's giddy introduction. "Pleased to meet you?"

She couldn't help pronouncing it as a question. Nothing had gone the way she hoped it would, today, and she couldn't explain McGonagall's behaviour with any logic she possessed.

"Miss Potter, you are hereby excluded from flying lessons."

Dahlia blanched and twisted in her seat to face forward again. Her belly clenched unpleasantly. The idea of losing that feeling of utter abandon weighed heavily on her. Though she placed a high value on her magical education, the loss almost felt worse than the prospect of expulsion.

She couldn't imagine Safiya's disappointment. She'd _never_ failed a class.

"From what I saw, they're not needed beyond a few safety pointers," the professor continued, words curling into a more noticeable Scottish brogue in her excitement. "You will join Mr Wood for practice at his earliest convenience, and you _will not_ mention this to anyone else until you play, excepting Miss Granger, of course."

"But… Aren't I in trouble?" the girl asked incredulously, sweeping a hand through her hair.

"Yes, most definitely," McGonagall confirmed, still smiling brightly. "You have detention with me this evening. That does not mean I would overlook such a display of talent."

"Is she really that good?" Oliver chimed in, appraising the first-year critically. "That was your first lesson, wasn't it? I thought you grew up muggle."

"I did, and it was," Dahlia mumbled. "I couldn't just sit there, though. Neville could have broken his neck."

"Hold on," the boy frowned. "What happened, exactly?"

"She dove two hundred feet and caught a boy twice her size on one of Rolanda's sorry excuses for good transportation," she sighed. "That was extremely reckless of you, by the by, Miss Potter. I'll leave the final assessment to you, of course. A boy does not a snitch make, no matter how fast he falls; however, from what I witnessed, you would be remiss not to give her a try."

"Brilliant!" Wood shot to his feet. "I've got a free period next, and I only had twenty minutes left of Charms. D'you think Professor Flitwick would mind if I..?"

McGongall drew out a slip of parchment before he finished his sentence and handed it across the table.

"He's just as tired of Severus' gloating as I am, Mr Wood, and you've always kept your marks up. I'll speak with the headmaster to see about getting dispensation to circumvent the first-year broom ownership regulations, as well, once you've given me your seal of approval. Off you go."

Dahlia got to her feet, still feeling utterly baffled by the course of the day's events, and allowed Oliver to lead her back outside and down to the Quidditch Pitch. The training grounds had been abandoned by the time they came through again, the brooms already stored away after their debacle of a first lesson.

"So," Wood said as he dragged a worn, steel-banded trunk from a cupboard once they descended to the pitch and wound their way through the Gryffindor changing rooms. "How much do you know about Quidditch, already?"

"Er-"

He raised a caterpillar-like brow, and Dahlia forcibly pushed her persisting confusion to the back of her mind.

"Seven players: one keeper, two beaters, three chasers, and one seeker to a side," she rattled off.

No matter what she felt about the youngest Weasley boy, she couldn't deny he knew his stuff when it came to 'the only wizarding sport worth mentioning,' as he'd put it on the train.

"There are two bludgers for knocking people out of the air, one-" she frowned. "Red ball used for scoring, ten points a goal- Quiffle?"

" _Quaffle_ ," Wood corrected. "Go on?"

"And the snitch ends the game, worth 150."

"Very good," the captain said approvingly.

He shucked his overrobe, tossed it to the grass, and kicked the trunk at his feet. The latch popped open, and Dahlia peered at its contents curiously.

The balls she'd described lay within, but she had not expected the steel chains locking the bludgers in place. They rattled ominously beneath her inspection.

"Wow," she murmured, straightening to eye Wood with growing respect. "You willingly fly around with _those_ trying to take your head off?"

"You get used to it," he shrugged. "No worries, lass. Hardly anyone ever dies. You get hurt often enough, but it's worth it."

Even having experienced the joy of flying, she wasn't sure if she quite agreed with the sentiment.

"Right. That's not mad at all," she laughed. "So, where's the snitch?"

"All in good time, Potter," Wood grinned. "Let's start you off with these."

He popped open a panel concealed beneath the bludgers' encasement, revealing a dozen ordinary golf balls. Another kick revealed a drawer, from which he pulled a full-length broom. Dahlia watched delightedly as it apparently grew from the shallow depths.

 _I have to see if the person who inspired Mary Poppins was a witch_ , she thought as she accepted the vehicle.

Unlike Madam Hooch's ragtag collection of school brooms, Oliver Wood's gleamed from a recent polishing, and the twigs at its tail aligned perfectly to create a graceful shape not unlike a paint brush. Two shining metal foot rests protruded from the shaft near the end, which Oliver helpfully folded down for her.

"Right. Let's start with a few practice laps. Feel free to leave your robes, there," he directed, gesturing to his own carelessly discarded garment.

She followed his example eagerly, mounted the beautiful vehicle, and shot into the air with a delighted shout.

"I want five laps, fast as you can, Potter!" the captain called up to her, his voice amplified as if he held a megaphone.

Dahlia looked down and spotted his wand pressed lightly against his throat. She resolved to look up the spell for that, too, before willing the broom faster.

If her first attempt at flying felt easy, her second evoked a sensation of freedom so complete, she could barely focus on anything else. Her borrowed broomstick responded to her will with the slightest of nudges, and she rapidly lapped her starting point with little effort. She flew pressed almost flat to the handle, her hair blown away from her face to tangle behind her in a hopeless mess.

"I'm throwing the first ball!"

Aided by magic, the first projectile launched nearly across the pitch and began its arc back to earth. The broom swerved with her momentum but quickly picked up speed again as she pursued her quarry. She raced gravity, pushing herself faster until she felt her fingers close around the lacquered, pitted sphere.

"YES!" Wood crowed, grinning madly from below. "Keep it up, Potter!"

One after another, he sent targets into the air, and as the sun grew lower on the horizon, he stopped waiting for her to catch one before throwing the next. Still, only a few slipped her grasp, although she almost lost her glasses a few times when he finally released the snitch. As he'd alluded, it definitely provided more of a challenge than the golf balls, especially in the fading light, but she managed to grip the cold metal snitch in under ten minutes.

She'd have to ask Sirius to find her some prescription goggles or get better at her sticking charm, for sure.

"Merlin," he breathed when she drifted gently back to the pitch, sweaty, aching and chapped, but exhilarated nonetheless. "She wasn't joking."

"Does Professor McGonagall know how to joke?" Dahlia quipped, reluctantly passing back the broom to return to its bigger-on-the-inside drawer.

"I don't know," Wood chuckled. "She puts up with the twins. They're our beaters, by the way. I don't know if you've met them, but Angelina, Katie and Alicia are our chasers. I'll tell them to introduce themselves if they haven't, already."

"Thanks," the first-year said as they retrieved their robes and began the long trek up the hill. "I thought I'd give it a go next year, but I don't think I could wait to fly again, after the first time."

"Addicting, isn't it?" the older boy smiled knowingly. "Just make sure you're not flying where anyone else can see you, lass. You've got a cup to win us, and you won't do Gryffindor any good if some snake decides to break your legs."

Dahlia gawped, appalled.

"Surely that hasn't _actually_ happened, has it?" she demanded. "The professors-"

"Punish whoever they can catch, but by then Pomfrey will have already banned you from playing. You'll see. There's a reason we're not telling anyone who's filling the seeker's spot until you're already on the pitch," he said firmly. "And after that, you'll have one of us with you throughout the week leading up to our next game. No offense, but you're puny."

"Hey!" the witch protested. "I've taken on full-grown wizards, thank you very much."

"Yeah, and you're still a wee thing," Oliver laughed, shoving her shoulder lightly just to prove his point, making her stumble a little. "Won't stop you from catching a hex to the back or a quick shove off a moving staircase."

They paused in the entrance hall, and Wood checked his watch.

"Better head to your detention," he said. "Need help finding McGonagall's office again?"

"No, thank you," Dahlia smiled. "You'll let me know when-?"

"Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday mornings, 5 a.m. sharp," he whispered. "Don't worry. Angie'll wake you if you forget."

The girl shook her head. She wasn't quite sure what she'd gotten herself into, but the gleam in Oliver's eye made her wary. Daniel Granger wasn't a bigger than average sports fan, but his passion for music and science fiction produced the same glint of obsession in his gaze. With him, it was mostly innocuous. In most people, however, fanaticism on any level made her wary, and she got the distinct feeling Wood possessed a special sort of madness for the sport.

She began to rethink her conclusion McGonagall's response to her bout of reckless insubordination qualified as merciful.

"Right."

"G'night, Potter!"

With that, the older boy strolled into the Great Hall for dinner, leaving Dahlia to trudge up the innumerable stairs, again.

It hurt worse after flying. Much, much worse.

McGonagall arrived a few minutes later bearing a plate of sandwiches, took one look at the girl, and directed her to sit and eat before beginning her detention, which mainly consisted of finishing off any homework she hadn't already.

It wasn't until she returned to her common room later that she remembered Neville's broken wrist. A brief inquiry with the twins (which involved a very enthusiastic and overwhelming round of hand-shaking in congratulations) made her decide to change into her sleep shirt and dressing gown before returning to the fire and the warm, cushy sofas before it. She settled in to wait for her godbrother with her defense text propped on her knee, but before she knew it, she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Hermione left the infirmary emotionally drained and physically exhausted. Shortly after Neville woke from his spell-induced nap (to keep him from jostling his wrist while the potion began its work) Madam Pomfrey finally banished her from the wing. With a short hug and a promise to have Dahlia call her mirror as soon as Neville saw her, Hermione left the boy to the matron's care and began the long trek to her common room.

She could barely keep shuffling through the cool dungeons, her mind entirely occupied by the day's events, and she hardly registered the stares that followed her the moment she slipped through her house's hidden door.

The first-year flying class had just crested the hill and caught sight of Dahlia's gentle landing before Madam Hooch and McGonagall whisked her and Neville away. In Hermione's panic, she hadn't had the wherewithal to disobey the sharply barked command to stay with the class. Her brain didn't engage until Malfoy, of all people, inadvertently delivered a reminder amid his self-important diatribe.

Hermione returned to the training grounds on unsteady feet only to find the insufferable boy tossing a small glass ball into the air repeatedly between snide remarks to his snickering cronies.

"Have you ever seen anything so pathetic in your life? I swear, the idiot's a squib if there ever was one," his cruel gaze narrowed as the muggleborn returned to the group. "Too bad he didn't break his neck. There ought to be a law to prevent that sort from coming here. They're a danger to everyone. I pity whoever takes up the mantle of Lady Longbottom."

Malfoy tossed the remembrall into the air, again, and caught it at the last second. The Gryffindors were too busy talking among themselves in whispers - far too excitedly to be seemly, in her opinion - to notice.

"You shouldn't speak about others like that," Hermione said shakily over one of the boys' lewd jokes about Neville's inability to handle his broom. "He's a lovely person and a brilliant wizard. He's just a beginner like you or me."

The blonde's pointed features contorted as if he'd smelled something extremely unpleasant.

"You and I have nothing in common, Granger," he said, pronouncing her name like a curse. "And Potter's oaf of a godbrother is a disgrace to wizardkind."

He looked her up and down, clearly communicating he included her among those he considered disgraceful. Around them, the chatter diminished, and Hermione swallowed down a furious retort.

"You are entitled to your opinion," she muttered evenly. "But that doesn't mean you can speak badly about my family. Please give his remembrall here. He'll miss it."

The evil little grin returned to the boy's lips.

"No, I don't think I will," Malfoy hummed. "I'd not want you holding onto any of my things. It might get lost in that mess you call hair if you don't befoul it, first. I think I'll leave it somewhere safe for him to find, later."

"Please. Give. It. Here," she demanded icily, eyes narrowing.

He smirked and laughed when one of his bookends elbowed him in commiseration, whispering something she couldn't hear.

"I don't think I will," Malfoy taunted. "It'd be safer up in a tree!"

He called his broom and mounted it, kicking off.

Adrenaline and anger made a stiff cocktail, and the combination fried the last of Hermione's frayed nerves, obliterating her patience more effectively than anything she'd experienced before.

Malfoy barely made it a foot off the lawn before her banishing charm knocked him violently to the ground. It left him gasping on his back, struggling to catch his breath after its forceful expulsion from his lungs, and he quite forgot the small ball clutched in his fingers. She snatched it up, turned on her heel, and marched back toward the silent Slytherins and Gryffindors.

"When my father hears about this-" he groaned and inhaled a squeaky wheeze as he regained his feet with Crabbe and Goyle's combined assistance. "He'll have you expelled!"

The boy had yet to straighten from his abrupt reacquaintance with gravity, so the threat fell short of intimidating. She ignored it and continued back toward the castle and the infirmary, back ramrod straight. After that, she'd been too focused on Neville to contemplate the consequences of her actions.

It would have been impossible not to notice the unnatural quiet as she paused just past the threshold of her common room, however. Her shoes sank a little into the plush persian rug under her feet as she looked around cautiously. She spotted Tracy and Daphne sitting stiffly on the black leather loveseat across the common room, others occupied by the rest of the Slytherin first-years. Her internal register paused as a girl with sandy brown, wavy hair stood from the armchair directly opposite the entrance. A silver and green enamel badge stood out against the left lapel of her waistcoat. Hermione swung her bag behind her, out of her way, as the prefect peered down at her.

"Granger," she greeted coolly. "You barely made it. May I ask where you've been all this time?"

"Infirmary," Hermione answered with a frown. "I'm sorry, I don't think we've met, Miss..?"

"Iphigenia Burke," the older girl supplied. "Do you know why I'm speaking to you, Granger?"

She kept her face neutral as she subtly resumed her survey of the room. An unusual number of first and second-years occupied the furniture, which they usually yielded to senior housemates by that time of night. A sinking feeling weighed in the pit of her stomach.

"I imagine it would have to do with my public disagreement today," the first-year replied honestly, seeing no point in pretending otherwise.

"Right in one," Burke nodded. "So you _were_ here for Professor Snape's welcome. I'd wondered."

Barely masked guffaws reached Hermione, and she spotted Malfoy sitting in an alcove across the room with Crabbe and Goyle, each watching with varying levels of anticipation and dislike.

"I'll gladly accept any rebuke deemed necessary," she said clearly. "But I'm not sorry."

The older girl considered her a moment. Hermione stared back with none of the nervousness that normally accompanied such encounters in her previous experience. She was too tired. She could only feel resignation and a small amount of dread.

"Right," the prefect said neutrally. "Malfoy, please join us."

The blonde strutted from his seat among the audience and stopped at Burke's side, his chest puffed out as he sneered at his year-mate.

"Did you or did you not also attend our little welcome on Sunday night?"

Malfoy started and turned to gape up at the prefect in surprise. She nodded for him to answer when he neither spoke nor closed his mouth.

"Of course I was," he said impatiently. "What does that have to do with anything? Shouldn't you be getting on with things?"

"I will proceed shortly, Mr Malfoy," Burke wryly assured him. "Right now I'm deciding what to do with you."

Hermione wanted to smile at the appalled expression twisting the boy's thin-lipped mouth and wide, grey eyes.

"I'm not the one who disgraced us today!"

"Really?" the brunette snorted, crossing her arms. "From what I've heard, Granger's not the one who mouthed off to a professor and showed his arse to everyone in Gryffindor's first-year class. _You_ started the confrontation, Malfoy, and everyone there witnessed it."

"That's not fair!" he gasped, his face reddening rapidly. "I was just-"

"What you _were_ , Mr Malfoy, was incredibly impolitic. Ten non-Slytherins witnessed what you said and did, and had any of them cared to tell McGonagall, you'd be in the Headmaster's office right now for thievery and cost us points at the very least," she said reasonably. "Like it or not, Granger's got connections. You're a Slytherin. You should _think_ like one, if you can't behave as such. Who do you think Dumbledore would have believed? The Girl-Who-Lived's sister, or you?"

"My father-!"

"Is why we're having this conversation," Burke continued mildly. "Normally, I'd assign you both detentions and be done with it, but that would require logging it with the Heads and McGonagall, and I'd rather not lose yet more face in front of our adversaries. On top of all that, we'd have to deal with the inevitable tug-of-war between Lord Black, Madam Longbottom and Mr Malfoy, which would only cause trouble for Professor Snape, and therefore us. Given all that, we're going to deal with this in a somewhat less conventional way."

Hermione's interest piqued at that, and Malfoy's furious face settled into something shrewder.

"When this sort of thing happens third year and on," Burke said once assured of the boy's attention. "You duel whomever you have a problem with here in the common room. You fight it out, and leave the argument there. If any further disagreements between you and your adversary are witnessed by non-Slytherins thereafter, Professor Snape involves himself, and your life becomes a lot less enjoyable."

"What are the terms?" Malfoy asked.

"Nothing inherently lethal, and you fight either until someone yields or is incapable of continuing. First Order prefect or designated proxy - myself, in this case - judges," she rattled off. "Are we agreed?"

"Yes!" he grinned and drew his wand excitedly.

Burke glanced back to the first-year witch still frozen in front of the door.

"Granger?"

She bit her lower lip and nodded before depositing her bag on the nearest piece of furniture, along with her overrobe.

A wave of the prefect's wand lifted the low coffee table perpendicular to the enormous central fireplace, and the elegant sofas at either side slid away from each other as if polarised. The rug between them rolled up and inch-wormed away, leaving behind a long, wide aisle between the hearth and door. Burke rapped her wand on the common room's entrance, and a blue glow covered the hidden portal and spread to create floor-to-ceiling walls of light at either side of the aisle. They disappeared, and she walked to stand between them.

"We'll begin on my count, and no matter the outcome, this stops here," she said sternly, eyeing Malfoy in particular.

Hermione swallowed hard. Her heart started to pound faster. Her hands shook, and her brain moved slowly, far too taxed to function to her standard. She felt very much like an elastic band stretched to its breaking point. One tear - one careless poke - could send her flying violently off into the ether, never to be seen again until pulled, dusty and cracked, from behind the sofa months later.

"One-"

Her wand slid into her grip with a flick of her wrist. Malfoy sneered and brandished his like a sword.

"Two-"

She repositioned her feet and widened her stance, turning to present a smaller target, as she'd been taught since shortly after Christmas.

"Three!"

" _Depulso!"_

She knew as soon as she cast that the spell would go wide, but Malfoy ducked anyway.

" _Tarantallegra!"_

Hermione stepped to the side and advanced a little.

" _Expelliarmus!"_

Her opponent barely skipped aside in time, and the orange beam hit the mantle behind him, bouncing to fly into the boundary ward and dissipate with a fizzle and a brief flash of blue.

" _Lacarnum Inflamare!"_

A stream of bluebell flames erupted from the tip of her wand. Malfoy leapt away at the heat, and she pressed her advantage.

" _Sapounpatre!"_

Fluffy, lemon-scented lather erupted from the boy's nose and mouth, and he gagged violently as the bubbles forced their way out of his past his lips. He flailed, trying to fling the stuff away, but only succeeded in making the harmless blue fire sizzle. Small mounds of pillowy bubbles slicked the floor. Draco slipped as he tried to step forward, unable to speak around the impediment.

"Yield," Hermione breathed.

Malfoy spluttered and gestured his wand at her uselessly.

" _Apercutia!"_ she snapped.

He grunted and clutched his stomach in response to the hard strike.

"Just give up, Malfoy!"

He coughed and tried to bring his wand to bear.

"Fin-" he gagged again around another wave of bubbles. "Fini-"

"Oh, for heaven's sake-" the girl huffed. " _Somnus._ "

She waved her wand in a slow _S_ , and the boy's eyelids drooped. He fought it stubbornly for several seconds, but without the ability to clear his mouth or take a proper breath, he had no chance against the normally gentle drowsiness-inducing spell.

After a long blink, he slumped to the floor, and the duelling ward fell with a soft hum. Hermione sighed, cast a quick _Finite_ and picked up her things, leaving Malfoy snoring softly on the flagstones.

"Was there anything else, Miss Burke?" she asked tiredly, pointedly ignoring the majority of her housemates.

"None at all, Granger," the prefect said lightly. "Off you go."

"Good evening, then," Hermione murmured.

She trudged through the archway leading to the girls' wing, down a set of stairs and off a short corridor to the first years' room. A soft, orange glow emitted from the grating carved into the filigreed wrought iron and stained glass walling the wood stove at the centre of the pentagonal room. The crystalline ceiling shone darkly overhead, and odd shadows slid across the floor at intervals. Usually, the sight filled her with a sense of wondering appreciation. She stumbled over to her bed, toed off her shoes, and crawled on top of the covers without bothering to change. She barely managed to draw the curtains and spell them closed with a sticking charm before slipping quickly into unconsciousness.

* * *

Saturday dawned bright and sunny in the Granger home. Safiya sat on the shadowed side of the breakfast table with a tiny, steaming cup of dark, fragrant coffee held delicately between her long fingers. Her lustrous hair fell around her face in loose, thick black waves over a fluffy, age-stained dressing gown. Her wide sleeves made soft swishing noises against the page before her with her every movement. Her husband watched her read the girls' latest letter (which had arrived shortly after a somewhat panicked mirror-call the night before) from across the warm wooden tabletop, sipping tea and smiling goofily over the top of his cup at his wife.

"Dear," Safiya hummed. "You're doing it again."

"Can't help it," he replied unapologetically. "You're too gorgeous."

"You're distracting me from my reading," she countered.

"Still can't help it. I love you."

She met his gaze properly and grinned coquettishly.

"I know."

"It's so hot when you quote _Star Wars_ to me," he sighed blissfully.

A rustle of feathers reluctantly drew the man from his seat, and Dan opened the window to allow a handsome barn owl into the tidy kitchen.

"Where are those knut things?" he muttered, rummaging through the ubiquitous junk drawer beside the sink while the bird watched, perched on the sill. "Bloody things make no sense."

"Little bronze ones, patchwork coin purse right in the front," Safiya directed. "Let me see the comics when you're done?"

She took a couple sips before looking over her shoulder. Dan stood at the window, eyes wide as they dashed back and forth, one arm extended toward the owl with its fee pinched between his fingers. The owl's head twisted, and its neck stretched up and down, looking between the man and the money, until it finally grew impatient.

"Ouch!" Dan shouted, dropping the coins in surprise and tucking the paper under his arm.

The owl snatched up its prize, squawked reproachfully at the man, and flew away in a huff.

"Bloody bird bit me," he complained, holding out his bleeding hand to his wife for examination.

Safiya sighed at the minor laceration.

"You've a medical license. Go get the first aid kit," she directed. "What had you so enraptured? Usually you get through one paragraph and demand the Red Pen."

The muggle dentist and literature lover made a habit of correcting the newspaper's copy and sending his revisions back to the _Prophet_ 's headquarters after the paper's editor rudely refused to correct the spelling of Hermione's name in multiple articles over the summer.

An advertisement appeared in the publication a month after the start of his campaign announcing the creation of a new position at the _Daily Prophet_ \- 'Manager for Public Communications' - whose main duty, from its description, seemed to be the sorting and handling of unwanted post.

Based on its continuing spot among other help-wanted ads, Safiya assumed no one had been masochistic enough to fill it.

Dan liked to think he inspired the job, and so he kept up the exercise he deemed a public service.

"Front page," the man said, extending the publication to his wife after he pressed a clean tea towel against his new wound. "Bloody thing bites harder than Robbie Fenwick."

Safiya rolled her eyes before her gaze settled on the bold, gothic font:

 _Children's Protection Act to be heard on Hallowe'en_

 _Special Correspondent Gil Grear_

 _7 Sept. London - Ministry officials announced their intent to present a bill they called_ Dahlia Potter's Act. _Its official name, the_ Children's Protection Act _better describes its purpose, but officials insist the document would never have come into being if not for the Girl-Who-Lived._

" _We all felt personally responsible for what happened to Miss Potter in the spring," said Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge (52, London). "It was a hard thing to admit, but she was absolutely correct in saying we failed her, and so it's only right that we rise to her challenge."_

 _For those behind on current events, May featured the kidnapping and near death of Dahlia Potter, ending a string of muggleborn murders attributed to Jack Scabior, now deceased. Her family held a press conference shortly thereafter in which Potter urged the Ministry to make changes._

 _Amidst an ongoing investigation into the validity of her claims others may have been involved with Scabior's crimes, Minister Fudge took it upon himself to ensure such a thing could never happen again._

" _With the assistance of my staff and several upstanding members of the Wizengamot moved by Miss Potter's harrowing experience, we have drafted a document I wholly believe will eliminate not only the risk of inadequate response in the event of emergency, but also alleviate much of the wrongs done to muggleborn children joining our society," said Fudge. "It is our dearest hope this law will launch us into a new, more peaceful, accepting tomorrow."_

 _Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge (41, London) further elaborated on the bill's efficacy._

" _The most important provision in the Children's Protection Act allow for a closer relationship with muggleborn children from the first instance of accidental magic, onward. Its intent is not only to encourage better integration, but also to ensure each muggleborn child has a magical liaison personally responsible for ensuring his or her assigned child's safety," she said. "This progressive and decisive move guarantees no other muggle-raised witch or wizard can be made the victim of ill-intentioned wizards or muggle abusers. It is clear from Dahlia Potter's case that we should have done something like this sooner. If Bagnold's Ministry had done its job, Miss Potter and those other poor children would never would have fallen into Scabior's clutches."_

 _Umbridge continued to advise all wizarding citizenry to watch during the next weeks to remain up to date on developments arising as Minister Fudge prepares to present the bill to the WIzengamot on the 11th anniversary commemorating the end of You-Know-Who's War. She said any and all are welcome to sit in the gallery at noon on Oct. 31 to hear the proposed legislation in its entirety and to observe what she called an historic event._

" _Never before has such a thing been attempted," said Minister Fudge. "I believe this to be just the first step of a new type of Ministry: a Ministry our children's grandchildren will look upon with pride and gratitude for its stewardship."_

.

Safiya lowered the paper and shot a worried look at her husband, who had managed to clean and bandage the cut on his right hand while she finished reading the article.

"It sounds awfully good, but…"

She trailed off, biting her lower lip and furrowing her brow.

"Yeah, I know," Dan agreed. "Too good to be true, right?"

"Perhaps we ought to give Sirius a call. He should be able to get a copy of the draft," Safiya murmured, gulping the last of her coffee and standing to tighten the sash about her waist. "I suppose it was a bit too much to hope for a quiet Saturday."

Her husband closed the first aid kit's tin lid and loosely draped his arms around her hips, pressing a kiss to her neck above the ratty old dressing gown's collar.

"No worries, love," he hummed against her skin. "I've already booked our tickets for this winter. The girls are old enough to roam responsibly on their own, so we'll have plenty of time to unwind, just you and me, white sands, and glorious sunshine."

Safiya laughed and wriggled out of his tender hold.

"Watch it, Mr Granger," she said. "If you're not careful, I might make you whisk me away early."

"God, please do."

Mrs Granger giggled and rushed up the stairs to change, her husband in hot pursuit.

* * *

Author's Notes

And we end with some Granger fluff. Dan and Saf are quickly becoming a favorite among couples I've written. They've sort of taken on a life of their own, and I find myself looking toward their future with more attention than I previously paid them.

Next chapter should (hopefully) post around this time next week, but as always, no promises.

I'll also be running through previous chapters to begin fixes for typos and errors, so if you see an update alert earlier than this time next week, feel free to ignore it. I'll make an effort to do the updates all at once, though, so hopefully you only get one.

Thanks everyone who took time to review, fave or follow. Y'all definitely keep me going at times.

Reviews & Q.A.

Nemesis13 - Special thanks for your encouragement, criticism and offer for shout out! I'm honored to have attracted your attention with this. Your stories definitely inspired me to take the plunge into the genderbent A/U.

On that note, anyone reading this should check out Nemesis' works if they're into independent Fem!Harry. They're always playful, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining.


	13. A Normal Saturday

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Thirteen: A Normal Saturday

* * *

"Dahlia?"

"Nng…"

The sable-haired witch rolled over in her bed, her long, tangled hair strewn around her face in a wild halo. She waved her arm floppily in protest against the disturbance, but her tormentor refused to be swayed.

"Come on, Potter. It's nearly half-past nine. You're going to miss breakfast at this rate."

She groaned and pulled her pillow over her face, effectively blocking out the sunshine beaming through the leaded windows as well as the noise. Unfortunately for the slumbering witch, however, the makeshift shield did nothing to protect her bare feet, which stuck out from her rumpled covers, making perfect targets.

Someone attacked her soles, and she squealed, bolting upright to glare at the blurry figure silhouetted against the deep-set windows opposite her four-poster.

"What's so bloody important?!" she demanded, squinting.

She couldn't make out who it was, but then again, she hadn't paid much attention to her dormmates, and they hadn't made an overtures of friendship after her very public altercation with Ronald on Monday. The first-year ran a hand through her tangled locks with a wince and rummaged on her bedside table until her fingers encountered her round, wire-framed glasses. A moment later, a girl she'd never met came into focus.

She stood several inches taller than herself (though nearly everyone within Hogwarts' walls could boast as much), but carried herself with a disarming confidence almost at odds with her gentle demeanour. She wore her hair in a high, neat ponytail and had donned an oversized cable-knit, powder-blue jumper over faded denims.

"Better?" the brunette laughed. "Merlin, you're a heavy sleeper. I've been here for ages trying to wake you up."

Dahlia flopped back onto her pillows grumpily.

"Sorry, but who are you?"

"Katie Bell, second-year," she replied, grinning despite the younger witch's early-morning rudeness. "Chaser, in case Wood didn't tell you yesterday."

"Oh!"

The first-year sat up again. She'd been nearly delirious with exhaustion by the time she found her way to bed the night before. She woke up shortly after two in the morning, and upon finding herself alone in the glow of the dying fire, went upstairs, changed into her favourite Pink Floyd tee (an age-softened relic gifted to her as a nightie by Dan shortly after she joined the family), shucked off her stockings, and crawled into her faintly lavender-scented sheets without even brushing her teeth.

She ran her tongue over her incisors and grimaced.

"Er-" she blushed when she realised Katie still stood there, waiting for something more intelligent to come out of her foul-tasting mouth. "Erm- Sorry, Wood ran me pretty hard last night. I'm still a little out of it."

Katie accepted her hand and shook her head in easy dismissal.

"By the state of those blisters, I'd say that's an understatement," she said sympathetically, turning over Dahlia's hand after shaking it.

Angry, pale pustules ringed in inflamed red skin rose against the heels of both hands.

"You should have Pomfrey fix those for you before long, and get some good gloves. You can borrow my catalogue, if you need it."

"Thanks," Dahlia grimaced, poking one experimentally. "I'll probably see her after breakfast. I've got a charm, for now. Just got the hang of it."

She plucked her holly wand from her drawer and held it gingerly with the tips of her fingers.

" _Sanleníre,"_ she murmured, sighing as the painful welts of her left hand deflated and faded back to their usual peachy tone.

"Woah. I thought healing spells were really difficult," Katie remarked, watching appreciatively as Dahlia switched to her remaining injuries. "How much magic did you learn over the summer?"

"Not too terribly much. Mostly defense and some practical work in Potions and transfiguration once Sirius joined the family," she demurred. "I had a really early start before then, though. Hermione learned _last_ September, so once they found out I was a witch, too, we started practicing together."

The spell didn't work as well casting with her off hand, but it did enough to ensure she wouldn't hurt herself further before she could see the matron.

"Still, that's really impressive. Speaking of which," the second-year said when Dahlia returned from a short trip to the bathroom to brush her teeth. "Yesterday can't have been your first time flying, where are those calluses from?"

She paused, glancing at her palms after setting her bed to rights. She had hastily combed out her hair before rummaging through her assigned dresser.

"Gymnastics. I competed at Marie Curie's," she answered through the material of her printed, long-sleeved tee as she pulled it over her head. "Never even touched a magical broom, before then, either."

"That's amazing, Potter," Bell said, shaking her head. "And Gymnastics- I think Angie's told me about that before… Lots of cartwheels and tumbling, yeah?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Wow."

Dahlia quickly buttoned her corduroy skirt and laced up her favourite high-top trainers before surreptitiously slipping her wands into their respective holsters under each sleeve. If the older witch noticed her shiftiness, she didn't comment. Dahlia couldn't help wanting keep her second wand to herself. It felt private, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why. Perhaps a holdover from years guarding her most prized possessions from the other kids in the Home, she mused. She still couldn't bring herself to leave Lily's license out of her bag.

"Breakfast?"

"Yes. Thanks for waking me up," she grinned as she followed Katie down the girls' staircase, skipping every other step. "Hermione would murder me if I slept all day. Do you have any siblings?"

"No," Bell said wistfully. "Only child. My mum's first husband died in the war, and she didn't marry my dad - my step-dad, technically - until later. I think she decided I was quite enough to handle on my own. How is Granger doing, anyway? You were really worried about her, right?"

Dahlia grimaced. The girl was kind not to comment past that. She'd been a bit of a terror during her first 24 hours at Hogwarts, and more than a little standoffish because of it.

"Yeah," she admitted. "Just a bit. She's well. Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis are nice enough, from what I can tell, and she can handle herself, anyway."

"That still must be really hard for her," Katie hummed sympathetically, helpfully directing Dahlia to a hidden passage behind a tapestry she'd not discovered for herself.

"Benefit being friends with the twins," she said at her curious expression.

Though they neither encountered stairs nor changed direction, they emerged behind a portrait of an axe-wielding goblin on the second floor a few short minutes later.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you wake me up today?" Dahlia asked as they finally cleared the last riser of the grand staircase.

"Honestly?" Katie clarified shyly, her blue eyes clouding a little.

The younger witch nodded emphatically.

"Always."

"I felt badly," she admitted softly. "I bought into the hype a bit, I'm ashamed to say, and I formed an opinion before I even met you. I started to feel guilty about it when I heard some other people talking and realised I hadn't been much better. I mean, I'm not a saint, but yeah. Anyway, Oliver telling us you'd be our seeker made me stop putting it off. I owe you an apology, you know? I'm really sorry. You've had a hard enough time of things without people gossiping about you."

"Oh," Dahlia breathed after swallowing a sudden lump in her throat. "Thank you."

"You're really, seriously welcome," Katie beamed. "See you later?"

"Er-" the first-year drifted to Neville's side and returned her wave. "Sure."

"Good morning," the boy said as soon as she swung both legs over the bench and smoothed her skirt over her knees. "Fred told me you waited up for me. I'm sorry I didn't come back. I would have if I'd known."

Dahlia rolled her eyes and nudged his shoulder with her own before loading up her plate with hardy, dark toast and fruit.

Although the tables stood nearly empty, by now, steam still rose in fragrant spirals from the bread. Before she could even go looking for it, a tea service floated over to her, courtesy some magic she _really_ wanted to figure out for the Grangers' sake.

Safiya and Dan liked cooking, but with an extremely busy dental practice, the task often left them feeling drained on their longer days, even with their alternating schedules.

"You fell I-don't-even-know-how-many-hundred-feet and you're worried about _that?_ " she teased as she perused the selection of black teas. "I'm just glad you're all right. What would I have done if I dropped you or didn't get there in time? Your gran would have murdered me, and sorry mate, but she really scares me."

"Ugh," the boy groaned, slumping against the scrubbed tabletop, narrowly missing the remains of a half-eaten crumpet and a lumpy grey smudge she thought must be porridge. "Do you remember seeing my remembrall anywhere? She's going to send me a howler if she finds out I lost it."

"Granger got it from Malfoy for you."

The pair turned to find Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown standing behind them. She frowned slightly. Despite sharing sleeping quarters with them for the past week, she had barely gotten to know either girl - or any of her other dormmates.

"Where were you last night?" Brown demanded. "We were worried."

"Er-" the girl sat up a bit straighter when she realised they were speaking to her and not Neville, whom everyone liked even if they made fun of his clumsiness. "Why?"

Patil had the grace to look mildly embarrassed. Both girls had made a point to avoid her after she very publicly decked Ron for his insinuations. Lavender seemed not to notice the wary confusion in her voice, though, and continued undeterred.

"Don't be silly!" she exclaimed. "You're our dormmate, of course we'd worry, especially when you didn't come back after what happened yesterday. We tried to wake you up, but you sleep like the dead."

"Sorry, I didn't think you'd care," Dahlia said bluntly, though not unkindly. "We haven't really talked, much."

Neither really knew what to say to that, and awkwardness quickly descended among them.

Neville - _Bless him,_ thought Dahlia - finally broke the stand-off by patting her shoulder.

"Hermione's waving at us."

The girl shot to her feet with a smile, barely sparing a moment to wrap her breakfast up in a serviette and gulp down her barely-steeped tea.

"Sorry, but I - _We_ promised 'Maia we'd spend the weekend together," she said quickly. "Maybe we can catch up a bit later, though?"

She barely waited for the girls' acknowledgement before she practically skipped to the door, pulling Neville behind her much as she had the previous day. Hermione stopped just beyond the threshold looking extremely well-rested, Daphne and Tracy beside her. She waved the other girls off and met Dahlia with a hug. She laughed at the strength of the Slytherin's arms around her middle, and eventually pushed her sister away with a grin.

"Good morning!" Hermione said brightly. "I'm glad you made it. I thought you'd miss breakfast after last night. Someone told me McGonagall gave you detention after dinner?"

"She did, and I would have done, but Bell woke me up. I have _loads_ to tell you, though. Have you eaten, already?"

"No, actually, I just woke up half an hour ago. I had a bit of a late night, too," she said with a slight tilt to the corner of her mouth.

Dahlia raised an eyebrow.

"I'll tell you later. Are you hungry? I thought we could take a constitutional and take some pictures for Mummy and Dad."

Dahlia grinned broadly.

"Perfect," she said. "I've got toast, if you want to head out?"

Hermione eyed the bacon, ham and eggs prominently featured at her house table with dislike.

"Definitely. Could we come back for tea, later?"

After quickly arriving at silent agreement, they fled onto the sunny grounds and wandered toward the sparkling lake. Hermione rummaged in her omnipresent bag and pulled out an old-fashioned instamatic. Dahlia cajoled Neville to stand beside her on the pebbled banks, and the Slytherin snapped a photo just as the giant squid waved a lazy tentacle, sending ripples dancing across the water and spraying them with mist as it disappeared beneath the surface again. The trio continued on after skipping a few stones, and Dahlia unwrapped her quickly bundled breakfast, passing a piece of toast to her sister. She began picking at the grapes and bits of melon dotted by crumbs, not caring at the slightly off texture caused by her rough handling and the dusting of buttery bread particles clinging to their them.

"So what happened after McGonagall took me to her office?" she finally asked, breaking the comfortable quiet.

The path bordering the lake lead them just past the treeline edging the small wood separating Hogsmeade station from Hogwarts' front gate, and she found herself looking up while her feet relied on feel to avoid tripping on roots or stones. Light played between the still lush, green leaves overhead, creating dappled shafts of emerald and peridot on their faces. She heard the click of the camera and felt her face heat beneath Hermione's affectionate, slightly exasperated smile.

"I _said_ ," she repeated. "I hexed Malfoy because he was going to hide Neville's remembrall."

"Really?" Dahlia laughed. "I wish I'd seen that. Maybe there's a way for wizards to view memories."

Hermione seemed to glaze as she considered the possibilities.

"You could see James and Lily!"

Dahlia stumbled and barely caught herself from falling face-first on the dirt path at her shout.

"Wh-what?"

"Memory! Sirius's memories," Hermione explained excitedly, gripping her hand. "If there's a way, you could see _his_ or Remus' memories of your mother and father."

The shorter girl slowed as she considered the idea. She couldn't imagine what that might be like, really. She'd seen the neatly labelled video cassettes dated around the time of Hermione's birth, of course, but she never imagined personally seeing her parents in the time of her infancy might be a possibility for herself. Better, she might be able to see her parents at _her_ age.

"Dahli?" Neville prodded gently. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said thickly. "Let's drop by the owlery on the way back?"

"Of course."

To her relief, neither asked why she didn't want to use her mirror, and she loved them more for it. She wasn't sure she could voice that request without bungling it, and part of her felt guilty. Even after only a few short months with Sirius and Remus in her life, she'd become well-acquainted with their shared grief for her parents and the family they lost in the Potters. It felt wrong, almost, to pick that scab for her own curiosity when James and Lily had been real people to her godfather and uncle. It was another thing entirely when they volunteered stories. She always drank those up like grass after a long draught. They assured her they were fine with her asking anything she liked, but she saw it in their faces anytime someone said their names, or when she mentioned anything about her life before she met the Grangers.

Every conversation about her mother and father felt like an emotional minefield, and she liked them too well to risk hurting them.

"Why were you up later than me, then, if you didn't get caught?" Neville asked, and Dahlia forced herself to shelve her internal reasoning and strategising for later.

He turned his remembrall over in his hands, and Dahlia grinned again at the idea of Malfoy flying bum over noggin off his broom. The Gryffindor may have been faster on her feet and quicker to rile, but the older girl was a force to be reckoned with given the correct conditions.

"Slytherin has a different set of rules than the other houses," Hermione related, rolling her eyes. "There are only three, but I managed to break two and almost broke the most important one, and even though there weren't any teachers around, the whole school knew what happened by the time I got in."

"What'd they do?" Dahlia demanded, her eyes narrowing as she did a quick reevaluation of Hermione's appearance.

"Oh, you-"

She linked their arms and leaned their heads together.

"Nothing I couldn't handle. Basically, our prefect said she wasn't going to take points or assign detentions because it'd be too much trouble for everyone involved, so she basically said she preferred we duel and work things out that way, like upper-years do," Hermione elaborated.

Neville snorted and chanced turning around to walk backwards. Both girls took turns watching the path ahead just in case. He had enough trouble coordinating without reversing his locomotion.

"That's not so bad," Dahlia allowed. "You kicked his arse, right?"

"Dahli! Language."

She shrugged unrepentantly, and her sister sighed.

"Sirius is a horrible influence on you."

"Nah," the slighter girl wiggled free and skipped ahead on the path a little, grinning mischievously. "Maybe I only started speakin' proper-like to impress ya."

Hermione shuddered at her grammar and affected accent. It sounded utterly _wrong_ coming from the quietly intellectual girl.

"Are you going to listen, or are you going to tease all morning?" she complained.

"Fiiiine," Dahlia laughed. "Go on, then. What happened?"

"Of course I had him on the ground in under thirty seconds," the Slytherin primly revealed. "I think he actually believes all that nonsense about 'inferior breeding'."

"That's funny, coming from an inbred-"

"Dahlia…" Hermione warned. "I'm going to get you a swear jar if you keep it up."

Neville blinked and laughed.

"What's a 'swear jar?'" he asked a little hesitantly.

"Tax receptacle for fees levied in punishment for foul-mouthedness," his godsister giggled. "Some people use it to discourage rudeness."

"So if I said 'Malfoy's an enormous tit'-" he hedged, glancing at Hermione, unable to keep his face straight.

"Prick-" Dahlia smirked, enjoying the rare spark of mischief in his eyes.

"Wanker-"

"Bawbag-"

"Don't encourage her!" the Slytherin scolded as Neville joined in her mirth, both snickering at their increasingly creative synonyms for 'Malfoy'.

"Plonker-"

"Knob-"

"Bogie-licking bum kisser-"

"Dragon dung-eating arsewipe-"

"Good grief!" Hermione whipped out her wand and tagged them both with a stinging hex.

Neville yelped, and Dahlia pouted as she rubbed her arm.

"Didn't you have _loads_ to tell us, earlier?" the witch cut across the protests she saw written on their indignant faces.

"Oh, yeah!" her sister immediately perked up. "I _think_ McGonagall likes me."

Her nose wrinkled as soon as the words left her mouth, and she considered for a moment.

"That, or she's more of a Quidditch nutter than Wood, but anyway-" she pressed on upon glancing between their expectant faces. "She took me to meet Oliver Wood straight away after we got back to the castle. We went to her office, she excluded me from all future flying lessons-"

Hermione gasped, eyes widening with horror, but Dahlia held her hand up to stall what promised to be an epic lecture before she could utter a word.

"And _then_ she told us both she wanted me to be seeker for Gryffindor's team. Wood's the captain," she said with growing excitement. "I spent the rest of the day flying drills and catching tennis balls, and I only got back so late because I could barely make it up the stairs after that and Professor McGonagall's detention. Our first official practice is tomorrow, but they're keeping things secret. Wood doesn't want to lose the surprise advantage. As of right now, everyone thinks he's going to field one of the other girls as seeker and bring in a reserve to finish out the chasers."

Neville clapped Dahlia's shoulder.

"That's amazing!" he said, quickly meeting her enthusiasm. "Sirius is going to throw you a party, he'll be so proud. Did you tell him, already?"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm going to include that when we go to the owlery, though. He'll probably want to help pick out my broom."

"That's just-"

They turned to Hermione, and the girl expelled a long sigh, shaking her head.

"You're both mad, and I think you should make sure you're not going to get a failing mark for flying classes," she said sternly, but her voice gentled at her sister's hopeful expression. "I suppose it's better than expulsion, in any case."

Dahlia threw her arms around Hermione and danced in a circle, pulling her along until she gave up and smiled.

"Congratulations. That said, I don't like the idea of you flying like that. Yesterday was terrifying by itself."

"Yeah," Neville shuddered. "I don't think I can ever get on a broom, again. I understand why Gran never let Sirius take me up, now. It was just awful."

"Sorry I didn't get there faster," his godsister said more soberly. "Your wrist's all better, right? Nothing else hurt?"

"Just my dignity," the boy mumbled, cheeks pinking. "Ron and Seamus are taking the Mickey every chance they get."

Dahlia scowled at the sound of Ronald's name and exchanged a long look with her sister.

"They don't mean anything by it, really, you know? I think they're trying to cheer me up."

"Well, they've an awful way of doing it," Hermione said decisively. "You could have died."

He shrugged, and Dahlia bumped his shoulder.

"Seriously, though," she murmured so softly Hermione strained to hear her from her other side. "Don't scare me like that, again."

Neville threw an arm over her shoulder.

"I try not to, but I probably will," he grimaced. "I'm not so good at- Well-"

He blushed.

"Anything, really."

"Nev?"

The boy glanced up and stumbled at the girls' matching, cat-like smiles. That expression had not boded well for him the few times he'd witnessed it.

"Y- Yes?"

"Every time you say something like that, I'm going to make Sirius relabel some of your seedlings back home," Dahlia said sweetly. "Understood?"

He blanched.

"I'll try," he finally muttered, squirming under their combined stare.

"Good," Hermione hummed, linking her arms with theirs as they broke the treeline again, emerging on the southeast side of the lake. "Because _I'll_ have to come up with something more inventive if that doesn't work."

The girls shared a laugh at the trepidation on his face, and Neville allowed them to lead him onward, terrified, but oddly happy for their threats, anyway.

…

Long after the bells tolled noon and the long shadows cast by the castle's towering spires and turrets shrank and darkened at its feet, the trio made their way back inside. Hermione and Neville sagged with relief. Both had shucked their outer layers beneath the bright sunshine and had tired before they finished rounding the lake. Only Dahlia's insistence kept them on the grounds, taking photos of anything and everything until her own hunger urged her toward the great hall, pausing only to leave a note with Hedwig.

Dahlia kept it brief, only relating Hermione's decisive triumph against the blonde bigot and a comment about wishing she could see it for herself, followed by a seemingly casual inquiry as to the existence of memory-viewing magic. The others agreed Sirius would likely offer if there were a way and would further volunteer his memories if he felt all right sharing them, so left it at that.

The remainder of their Saturday consisted of wandering aimlessly through the corridors, talking to portraits, and taking photographs of anything they thought might interest their muggle parents.

Hermione took special care in interviewing a barber-surgeon who had served Henry VIII before succumbing to magical malady at the unusually young age (for a wizard) of 67. Between she and Dahlia, they managed to interpret enough of his heavily accented Middle English to take down his story. Fortunately, the gentleman in the painting seemed amused and flattered at their attention and patiently explained and re-explained himself until they understood. Neville, meanwhile, tried to keep his lunch between what snippets he understood of the wizard's horribly graphic recollections of tooth extractions long past.

He'd known in abstract what the Grangers did for a living, but they were kind enough to not go into detail. From what he _had_ gleaned, however, most muggles considered modern methods a significant improvement over the horrors Barber-Surgeon Mac Giolla Mhín described. How this could be so with the the addition of electric drills and needles, Neville hadn't the faintest idea.

Muggles, he decided, must be much braver than most gave them credit for.

Finally, Dahlia took mercy on her godbrother and the trio said their good-byes to the construction of magic, oil, pigment and canvas. They continued on to the clocktower to take a picture overlooking the grounds as the sun sank behind the mountains, but found their path blocked by none other than Professor Quirrell.

It took Neville a moment to recognise the man.

The corridors were in no way deserted, of course, even on a Saturday afternoon, but the young wizard realised he had hardly noticed any professors about, at all, except during breakfast and lunch. Those they did pass, however, seemed unchanged by their day off. They wore the same robes, carried themselves with the same sense of authority.

If it weren't for the turban, he might have mistaken the youth leaning against the ramparts for a seventh-year.

Their defense instructor straightened upon hearing the heavy door creak open, and his face brightened upon their intrusion onto his solitude. He leaned away from the crenellated wall and brushed a little dust from the front of his Puddlemore United jumper before wiping his hands on the thighs of his denims.

"Hello, you lot," he greeted pleasantly. "Exploring, are we?"

"Yes, sir," Hermione replied, ever polite in the face of an adult, even one who looked barely graduated himself. "Our mum and dad asked us to take pictures where we could."

She held up the muggle camera, and the young man beamed.

"Oh, good show! Is that an Instamatic? I've been wanting one, but I can never seem to get away long enough to shop," he said regretfully. "I'm fairly certain the development potions used for magical photography could be adapted to work for muggle negatives, but I find myself reluctant to ask Professor Snape for assistance."

He winked at them conspiratorially.

"He scares me."

Neville giggled nervously, and the girls grinned.

"May I?"

"Oh, of course!" Hermione said, hastily passing the device over for his examination.

"These are vintage, aren't they?" he asked, turning it over in his hands. "Must be one of the Magicube ones, right? No batteries?"

The Slytherin smiled and nodded quickly.

"We tried one with batteries in Diagon Alley to test before Mum and Dad went looking for that one," Dahlia expounded. "They sort of sparked and smoked, and acid started leaking out."

"Yes, well, most wards produce electromagnetic fields. Interferes with all the fun muggle gadgets, of course," Quirrell explained with a sigh. "I did all sorts of experiments as a boy to try and piece together what made magic work. The headmaster was always very encouraging, but I'm sad to say he was the only one who expressed more than polite interest."

Hermione's brow furrowed, and Dahlia smiled at the indignation painted across her features.

"But how could they be so apathetic to such a mystery?" she demanded.

Neville grinned. Hermione had complained much over the summer about wizards' apathy toward the workings of their abilities. Quirrell smiled at her indulgently.

"I'm surprised you didn't make Ravenclaw. I asked the Hat how it worked and it put me there straight away."

The Slytherin giggled.

"Patches considered it, if only for a moment. Apparently I'm too stubborn to just let things be once I've obtained knowledge. I fully intend to make the absolute most of what I've been given and what I learn," she said passionately. "I haven't heard about cancer in relation to anyone magical, for example, and it's one of the biggest killers for muggles out there."

Her tone saddened a little, and Dahlia took her hand.

"My grandmother on Mummy's side died of it, you see," she said softly. "And then there's exploration to consider. Muggles have been in space since the 60s, and wizards probably have the capability to make interstellar flight a reality! I mean, you - we - can teleport!"

"I know what you mean," the professor said wistfully. "In any case, I think you ought to subscribe to some of the American magazines. There's a growing movement there to try overcoming the Statute of Secrecy as interest in scientific advancement expands."

The muggleborn girl immediately latched onto the concept, and even Dahlia struggled to keep up with her mind as she and the professor, whose face became more and more animated as he conversed with the decidedly un-childlike first-year, descended into a discussion of magical theory too maths-based for the younger girl to manage.

She utterly despised maths.

"Dahli?" Neville whispered.

"Yes, Nev?"

"What's she talking about?"

Her godbrother looked a pit pale in the face of Hermione's towering intellect. He knew she was clever, of course, but she rarely let anyone see more than a fraction of her true capabilities. The girl had an eidetic memory and an interest in nearly everything.

"You know how I told you the Americans flew men to the moon in the 1960's?" she murmured back, unwilling to break her sister's flow when she look so elated to be speaking to someone on her level.

"Yeah?" he acknowledged, following her to lean against the low wall overlooking the grounds.

Sunset cast the lawns in deep purples and blues, and the lake transformed into a fiery disc lined by dark trees silhouetted against the orange sun. Dahlia's face, half in shadow and the other a study in pink and yellow highlights, held an emotion he couldn't quite place as he shielded his eyes against the glare.

"Magic could probably take people to Andromeda, if they'd partner with muggle scientists," she explained pensively. "We - normal people - might be able to see space for ourselves. Right now, that's just a dream for the general public. Only a tiny fraction of specially trained muggle scientists and pilots are allowed to go into space, as things are. It's too expensive and dangerous for anything else."

"But the Statute-"

"Is going to be broken sooner rather than later," Dahlia said firmly but gently. "I told you about cameras and the internet. Technology advances at an exponential rate. Only twenty years ago, computers were rare, and now they're in every home. They're getting smaller, too. Give it another few years, and the mobile phone mum showed you will be the size of a pack of exploding snap cards, and it'll brush your teeth, too, or something else previously unbelievable."

Neville shifted anxiously from one foot to the other as he wove together what she and Hermione had said about the subject since they met. Listening to Hermione in that moment, however, he came to a conclusion he'd never considered, before.

"It-" he gulped and made himself look his godsister in the eye. "It sounds like she wants to change quite a lot. Get rid of the Statute, even."

Dahlia smiled wryly and shrugged.

"I think she wants more to make it so when it does go, because it will, magical people are seen as friends and not enemies to the muggles. She's not wrong. There are a lot of people in the world who are hurting and don't need to be. I know your Gran said we don't share magic because muggles would all come to us looking to fix their problems, and I don't think we should fix minor stuff." she admitted. "But it shouldn't be 'us' versus 'them,' you know? I always thought, growing up, that if I ever got rich, I'd do everything I could to eliminate orphanages. Use my good fortune to help kids, especially the weird loners, because I always wished someone would have done that for me."

She fell silent and returned to staring out at the landscape, and he tried to think about what she said without letting his Gran or Sirius' voice insert the opinions he'd grown up around. It was hard, though, and eventually he gave up in favour of enjoying the view, too. He thought he better understood why Sirius always spoke about Hogwarts the way he did, though.

It really was magnificent, and he'd never felt more at home, even with Ron and Seamus waiting to make fun of him in the dorms. The manor had always been restrictive: a monument to his ancestors' memories and his grandmother's guests. The gardens were the only space there that felt like they were _his_.

"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed, cutting off her own diatribe, though Quirrell seemed unbothered. "We were going to take a photo. Professor, would you..?"

"Of course," he grinned and accepted the device again while the Slytherin corralled her sister and Neville into posing against the ramparts. "One… two… Three!"

"Thank you, Professor," Dahlia said as he passed it back to them. "My parents will really appreciate it."

The wizard waved away their collective gratitude with an easy smile.

"Not at all. I'm sorry I interrupted your evening. It's been a long time since I've had such an engaging conversation," he said with an appreciative look toward Hermione in particular. "Actually, I wondered whether you girls, and Mr Longbottom, too, if he'd like, would want to explore some extracurricular study. I'm sure it's as clear to my colleagues as it is to me you and Miss Potter here have already learned what we have to teach your peers. It would be wrong of me to let you spend all term pretending otherwise. You must be terribly bored."

The girls were quick to reassure him otherwise, though both conspicuously made no mention of their experiences in History of Magic. Quirrell chuckled as he held the door open for them, and the first-years filed past onto the narrow spiral staircase.

"Now, now," he chided. "No need to be modest. You both know the first-year texts forward and backwards, by now."

Neville shook his head shyly.

"More than that, actually," he corrected. "Dahli can do a tonne of defense spells, jinxes and a few curses, and Hermione's working on an introductory healing manual on top of that, too."

Both girls blushed at the admiring tone of his voice.

"I'm not surprised," the young instructor hummed. "If you'll allow it, ladies, I'd be willing to get together with Filius and see if we can't come up with something more challenging for you both to pursue outside of classes. He was a duelling champion, you know, and - if you'll allow me a little immodesty - I'm not half bad myself. We could do it on Sundays, if you're amenable."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to be a bother," Hermione said quickly, though everything about her demeanour indicated how badly she wanted the opportunity.

"I'd love to," Dahlia said hesitantly, biting her lip. "But I observe a very strict schedule on Sunday mornings, so it couldn't be then."

Quirrell's brows disappeared beneath the lower edge of his turban.

"Indeed? Well, I'm sure we can figure something else out. In any case, I'd hate to interfere with a Saturday again. Enjoy those while you can, I say. What about Friday afternoons? You should have free periods, isn't that right?"

"Yes, sir," the girls said in tandem.

"Mr Longbottom?" the professor kindly prompted. "Would that work for you?"

His ears reddened, and he nearly tripped on the last stair before the corridor.

"Y-yes, but I'm not at their level," he mumbled, staring at his shoes. "I'm better at theory."

The professor winced as he recalled his first practical lesson for the Gryffindor first-years. Neville had somehow managed to bungle his caterwauling charm and accidentally jinxed himself to sing opera- Very poorly, at that, and louder than it should have been. To save their eardrums, he resorted to casting a silencing spell on him (a _finite_ didn't work), and it took the combined talents of Madam Pomfrey and Professor Flitwick to make him stop. By then, the poor boy had sung himself hoarse and required a restorative potion for his damaged vocal chords.

"You just need a little more practice and you'll be there too, Mr Longbottom," Quirrell reassured him. "You're very bright, you know. You're among the top of your class on all your written work, which is quite eloquent, by the way. Your Grandmother should be proud to have raised such an insightful boy."

Neville flushed beet red and Dahlia beamed, her respect for the defense instructor growing exponentially.

"Go on, Nev," she cajoled, nudging his elbow with hers. "It'll be fun."

"Oh, please, Neville," Hermione begged, practically bouncing in excitement at the prospect.

He looked helplessly between the girls' hopeful faces and sighed.

"Sure," he conceded with a small, anxious smile. "I'll do my best."

* * *

Author's Notes

Please take a moment to let me know what you think, if you've got one to spare. I'm picking up a lot of overtime, and I'm preparing to move, so any extra motivation helps me keep writing when I'm on the fence about working on this, reading, or bingeing Netflix.

I've decided I'm going to celebrate 100, 150 and 200 review counts with bonus chapters, since I've got several held in reserve, now.

Thanks all of you who've reviewed, followed or faved. Y'all are the reason I post these and don't just keep them on my hard drive for my own entertainment or catharsis.


	14. Hallowe'en

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Fourteen: Hallowe'en

* * *

The last warm vestiges of summer faded too rapidly, and the grounds of Hogwarts School transformed as autumn raced toward winter in a riot of colour and movement too ephemeral to appreciate between lessons, Quidditch practices, and, best of all, duelling lessons.

As he'd promised, Professor Quirrell conferred with Professor Flitwick and sent Dahlia, Hermione and Neville a note on the next Friday morning following their accidental meeting in the clock tower.

 _3 p.m. E.W. 3-209_

 _Q. Quirrell_

So after finishing the flying lesson neither enjoyed, Hermione and Neville met Dahlia on the third floor landing of the grand staircase, and the trio set out into the East Wing.

Much of the castle, as they discovered during their explorations, bore the marks of of a place diminished by two wars in too short a time. Most of their lessons occupied rooms in the first and second floors of the castle, leaving the majority of the many corridors uninhabited for who-knew-how-long. This benefited the students in that spell-casting practice, homework, club meetings, and mischief could branch out into disused spaces; however, as Neville and Hermione followed Dahlia into the abandoned wing, the vacancies took on an eerie feel.

"It's like walking through an empty church at night," Hermione whispered.

Dahlia nodded, but didn't voice her own uneasiness as they continued on. Each step sent up a puff of dust from the aged carpet, and the occupants of the portraits there did not speak to them, as those elsewhere did. Some seemed so faded their subjects might not have been able to, at all. Everything smelled old, almost like the library, but with an undertone of bitter neglect that made the air feel strangely inhospitable.

She would have said it felt haunted, except she knew the school ghosts preferred the populated portions of the castle, and most of them were perfectly lovely, anyway. Even the Bloody Baron, Hermione insisted, behaved the perfect gentleman to any student, though more stoic than his fellowes.

After a few short minutes of walking, they finally located room 209, and Dahlia opened the door to enter ahead of the others.

"Good afternoon," she said, blinking away spots from the sudden onslaught of bright sunshine streaming through the arched windows lining the large room

"Hello, you lot," Quirrell welcomed them jovially, standing from a spindly old chair between two casements. "What do you think?"

The first-years stared around in delight. Thickly padded mats carpeted the centre of the floor. A line of mannequins painted with glowing targets on their faces, chests, and limbs stood against the only wall uninterrupted by windows, and low bookshelves around the room displayed titles such as _Practical Defense_ and _Mad Maximillian's Million-and-One Magical Arsenal_.

"It's brilliant," Dahlia grinned.

Neville grimaced, and Hermione bit back a squeal, dancing in place.

"Excellent," the professor said, clapping his hands together. "Professor Flitwick will be joining us in a short while. He has to wrap up with his last NEWT class. In the meantime, I'd like to talk with you all about what you'd like to learn from us."

He waved his wand in a complicated motion, conjuring a low coffee table and five richly embroidered poufs. A moment later, a silver salver laden with a jug of iced water, goblets, and a china tea service appeared at its centre. Hermione's brows rose at the aroma.

"Is that chai?" she asked, raising the lid. "How did you know?"

"How did I know what?" Quirrel frowned, pouring himself a cup and adding a little sugar.

Dahlia happily followed his example.

"It's her favourite. Hermione's grandparents on our mum's side were from Pakistan, originally," she answered for her sister, who had gone a bit glazed sniffing delightedly at the heady, cardamom-scented steam. "She's been missing it."

"Ah!" the teacher smiled gently. "Well, it's my favourite, too. The chai shops in London see me quite often in the summers. In any case, there's no need to miss it, at all. Simply wish for it at breakfast and the elves will fix up a pot. I really do think there ought to be a 'First-Year's Guide to Hogwarts.' I was lucky enough my father attended, or I would have been lost, myself. Unfortunately, most wizards wouldn't even think to mention all the little tricks to making your time here more homey."

"Is _that_ how the meals work?" Dahlia asked. "Elves? There's nothing about them in _Hogwarts: A History_."

The professor shrugged a little ruefully.

"Most wizards take things for granted and don't bother explaining things they know to be 'true,' as it were," he lamented. "Perhaps your generation will do better, eh?"

After they each poured a beverage, the professor launched straight into introducing their extracurricular study.

"Filius and I were thinking we would focus on practical magic. For example," he said excitedly, turning to Hermione. "In our first lesson together, you overcharged a _Lumos_ to blind me and get away, which was absolutely effective, but inefficient. Casting the spell like that works, of course, but it would be dangerously draining in a real fight, because the framework for _Lumos_ isn't meant to channel that much power. There's another motion and an addendum to the incantation that creates the effect you achieved without risking exhaustion."

Hermione nodded eagerly, soaking up every word he said. Dahlia sat up a bit straighter. She'd been dying for a challenge, and while balancing her suddenly full schedule certainly presented one in itself, she found she missed the slight strain and sense of accomplishment she achieved learning spells with her sister before she officially reentered the magical world.

"We'd like to teach you three new spells to practice and help you hone the skills you've already developed," Quirrell continued. "It doesn't have to be all about defense, either, but as I understand it, you ladies are already well-versed in charms, jinxes and hexes from your independent studies at home. Is that right?"

Dahlia voiced her assent.

"Our mum went a bit spare when-" she cut herself off as Hermione shuddered. "You know, all _that_ started happening, so our dad enrolled us in some basic martial arts-based defense classes and helped us practice using that and magic together, at home. After, Sirius and Remus taught us a bit about duelling, and we've been keeping it up."

Neville shook his head quickly when the professor turned his expectant gaze on him.

"I did herbology at home," he volunteered in a slightly squeaky murmur. "I need to figure out how to do what I've been taught, already."

The professor clapped the boy's shoulder lightly.

"No worries, Mr Longbottom. We'll advance at whatever pace you need. I know you're a hard worker, and I've no doubt you'll catch up in due course."

What followed were the best hours Hermione and Dahlia had experienced since starting at Hogwarts. In the remaining time before Professor Flitwick arrived, Professor Quirrell drilled them on all the spells and charms they'd learned thus far, even asking them to demonstrate what transfiguration they'd managed. When Hermione, ever curious, inquired why, their instructor gave her a mischievous grin.

"It'll likely become more practical later on. Transfiguration is notoriously tricky, after all. Incantations only at the lowest levels, ambiguous wand movements-" he sighed fondly. "But there's something wonderful about slipping a transfiguration past an opponent mid-duel and having him step backward into a pit of sand instead of the stone he remembered. Very useful."

Once he established a reference point for his students' respective repertoires, he paired Hermione and Dahlia up on the padded mat to duel.

"Keep that on," he said firmly when the Gryffindor moved to shed her overrobe. "If you end up fighting someone in the wizarding world, or at least at school, you'll likely be wearing robes. If you're not used to the extra fabric, you'll be at a disadvantage. Better to get used to the weight and restriction."

She settled for buttoning back the voluminous sleeves, and at his signal, the girls began casting.

Hermione opened with a barrage of spells and jinxes, and Dahlia skipped and dashed out of the way with a broad grin splitting her face, barely bothering to shield except when her sister managed to bounce spells off the protective ward encasing their arena. The Slytherin was a little slower in her physical movements, but her wrist and arm swept this way and that in graceful, precise executions of textbook-perfect attacks. None of the spells she chose were terribly complicated. Very few surpassed four syllables, and none required much power, but she strung them together in such a way as to keep her sister on the defense until, panting for air, she was forced to let up.

Dahlia, who had only aimed a few counters and weak shields of her own with her holly wand, pressed her advantage immediately, switching to her aspen wand and her left hand. She advanced on Hermione's physical space, casting rapid-fire.

" _Impedimenta! Coloshoo! Langlock! Cantis! Flipendo! Depulso! Apercutia!"_ she pronounced, moving in closer, forcing Hermione to shield when she ran out of room to manoeuvre. " _Lakima! Lakima! Lakima!"_

The Slytherin's shield shattered with a _fizzle-pop!_

" _EXPELLIARMUS!"_

Hermione's wand sailed into Dahlia's hand, and she stopped.

"Oh bravo!"

Both turned to find Neville, Professor Quirrell, and Professor Flitwick applauding enthusiastically.

"Excellently done! Two points each," the diminutive charms teacher praised. "I haven't seen duelling like that from first-years except in the circuits! Just magnificent!"

Dahlia passed back Hermione's wand, and the ward collapsed.

"That was wicked!" Neville crowed. "You've gotten even better since the last time I saw you practice."

Hermione frowned and shrugged.

"Still not good enough," she complained. "Though I ought to be, by now. We do a little practice almost every other day after we're done studying."

Quirrell eyed her appraisingly.

"No, dear girl, you're _very_ good," he countered. "I think it's more an issue of method than ability."

"Precisely," Flitwick nodded. "Miss Potter, may I ask why you duel the way you do?"

"I'm fast," she answered after wiping her face on her sleeve. "Hermione knows more spells than I do. She tends to try and overwhelm me so I don't have time to hit back or get too close, but she gets tired, eventually, so I just wait it out."

Professor Flitwick waved them both over to sit at the table - perfectly sized for a wizard of his stature, Dahlia realised - and pressed cold glasses into their hands.

"An excellent strategy," he praised. "Especially toward an opponent with more knowledge. Miss Granger, how might you counter her?"

She sipped her water thoughtfully and worried her lower lip a little.

"Perhaps I could use more environmental spells to give myself a better chance at landing something?" she mused. "Maybe a water and freezing spell thrown in somewhere behind her between the others, and then steer her into slipping."

"A wonderful idea," Quirrell nodded approvingly. "She who can outthink her opponent wins far more often than one relying only on brute force, or in your case, a massive arsenal."

Things only got better from there.

Once they finished discussing their duel, Flitwick set Neville up with an animated mannequin and instructed him to incapacitate it, but after two attempts at casting fire spells and basic jinxes, the little professor stopped him.

"Mr. Longbottom, I've read your work, and I've watched you in my classes," he frowned. "You should be doing a lot better than your wand's giving you."

Neville flushed and looked at his shoes, and Dahlia's lips pressed together in a thin line.

"I'm sorry, Professor. I don't think I'm a very good wizard."

"Oh, dear," he sighed at his miserable response. "That's not what I meant at all. I meant _your wand_ isn't doing what it should given what you know. Your incantations and wand movements are near perfect. May I?"

The wizard marched over to Neville's side, and the boy bemusedly surrendered his wand. Flitwick's shrewd eyes narrowed as he turned it over in his unusually long-fingered hands.

" _Wingardium Leviosa,"_ he incanted, pointing at a teacup.

His lips pursed as it rose into the air obediently.

"Miss Granger-"

"Sir?"

She joined them at his gesture, taking Neville's wand in hand confusedly.

"Cast for me, will you? Anything."

Dahlia shrugged at Hermione's questioning glance. The Slytherin aimed her wand at Neville's dummy.

" _Confring-_ Ouch!" she gasped, dropping the focus as sparks blasted from it's end, singeing her hand.

"Oho!" Professor Flitwick cried triumphantly, plucking up the instrument and grinning at it. "This wand didn't choose you, did it, Mr Longbottom?"

"Er-"

He looked from Hermione to Dahlia and back to the professor.

"It was my dad's."

The wizard's smile immediately gentled.

"And it still _is_ , child, and it seems to be a very picky thing. Would you like to try with mine?" he offered kindly, extending a red-toned rod with an unusually wide, spiralling, intricately carved handle. "Go on. It's red oak, unicorn tail hair. One of Ollivander's, of course."

"Erm," Neville wrapped his hand around it with a frown. "If you're sure, Professor."

"Absolutely. Give it a try."

The boy squared his shoulders and aimed again at the dummy.

" _Incendio!"_

A plume of flames erupted from the wand, engulfing the canvas figure. Neville dropped the wand with a startled _eep!,_ tripped over the edge of the mat, and fell.

"Well done!" the Professor grinned as the girls shared in applause and celebratory whoops. "You, Mr Longbottom, have been working far too hard for much too little reward. That wand's not suited to you, through no fault of your own."

Neville's surprised and pleased smile crumpled.

"But my gran..." he shook his head. "She'll be terribly disappointed."

"Young man, if she doesn't take you to Ollivanders, she'd be doing you a disservice," Flitwick insisted, picking up his wand and tucking it into the holster hanging from his belt. "Either you write her, or I shall."

Neville spent the rest of their time that afternoon using Dahlia's holly wand, which seemed to like him just fine, if not as well as Flitwick's.

"We could always ask Sirius," she suggested later, after they arrived tired and hungry at Gryffindor table for dinner. "He'd take you right away. He'll probably not tell, either."

"I think I will," Neville said after swallowing a mouthful of steak-and-kidney pie. "My marks are horrible right now."

That evening, they mirror-called Sirius. He agreed to pick Neville up the following morning, and by the end of lessons on Monday, everyone who had previously made fun of his poor performance (Malfoy included) dared not say a word.

Spending weeks and weeks forcing his magic through a wand that didn't fit him resulted in extremely powerful - _too_ powerful - spells, and even if they'd jeered before, his detractors decided they'd rather not end up on the wrong end of his new focus.

Neville enjoyed their second session a lot more, and before long, he'd caught up to his best friends. His scores improved, and his confidence blossomed. Meanwhile, Hermione grew closer to Daphne and Tracey as it became clear she would not shy away from her house despite the occasional rude remark and Malfoy's continued sneering. The muggleborn found she'd grown quite fond of the pair.

Behind Daphne's cool exterior lay an extremely gentle witch who loved literature nearly as much as Hermione did. Tracey, meanwhile, had a wicked sense of humour and a talent for jinxes, which she gladly shared with her new friend in exchange for some pointers of her own. Dahlia began to relax around them during their nightly study sessions in the library, and mealtimes found the sisters at either table, joined by their respective housemates more often than not.

Everything began to feel so utterly _normal_ , magic aside, that Dahlia quite forgot her rocky first days. She went to lessons, tore through homework at record speeds, flew until she ached all over, occasionally helped the Weasley twins prep potions, and threw herself wholeheartedly into duelling. The only anxiety she felt concerned her upcoming match, which still lay a few weekends away.

Hallowe'en morning, therefore, struck her as an utter shock.

Things started out just like any other Thursday. She woke promptly at 4:30, brushed her teeth, gulped a glass of water, downed a granola bar (courtesy Safiya), plaited her hair, dressed rapidly in sweatpants and an oversized jumper, grabbed her new Nimbus 2000 (courtesy Sirius), and tiptoed into the common room to meet her teammates. Just as before every practice, Wood insisted the twins escort her through the secret passages to ensure no one saw her before 'the big reveal,' as they'd termed it.

Upon reaching the ground floor they trudged out onto the pitch for warm-up, after which Wood ran them through drills they could probably perform in their sleep, such was his fervour and their combined experience. They returned, tired and aching, to the dressing rooms to shower and change. Afterwards, the majority of the team went in for breakfast, while Fred and George secreted Dahlia into the castle by other means. She finally made it to Gryffindor table and spent the first ten minutes of her meal trying to find the teapot, which had been right in front of her the entire time. She only noticed the Great Hall's transformation after Neville joined her and commented on the man-sized jack o'lanterns lining the hall. At that point, she took a moment to appreciate the dancing skeletons (which had overtaken pedestals previously home to suits of armour) and the Hallowe'en themed pastries interspersing more typical fare.

"Good morning everyone."

She looked up from her bat-shaped eggs and buttered toast at the head table, where Dumbledore stood dressed in midnight black robes dotted with animated shooting stars. A few live bats circled his head for a moment before flying off to join the others fluttering innocuously over each table.

"And Happy Hallowe'en," the headmaster continued. " As you know, today marks not only one of our most treasured traditions, but also commemorates the anniversary of the end to Voldemort's war."

The hall flinched, gasped and squeaked collectively, and Dumbledore waited until his students calmed again before continuing.

"As I would prefer to leave our evening's feast unsullied by anything other than jolly frivolity, I would like to ask you to join me now in a moment of silent reflection while we remember those who came before us and gave their lives so we could live in this peaceful era."

Dahlia stiffened as a thousand pairs of eyes turned to her. She swallowed her mouthful, barely managing to force down food that suddenly tasted like paste on her palate.

No one spoke for a full sixty seconds, in which the only sounds she registered were the creaks of benches and chitter and flap of bats overhead. Neville reached out under the table to grasp her fingers in his clammy hand, and she clung to that feeling to anchor her.

"Thank you, everyone," the headmaster finally murmured, perfectly audible despite his soft-spokenness. "As always, a bonfire will proceed our feast in the Transfiguration courtyard."

With that, he returned to his meal, and the Great Hall burst into chatter again. Dahlia pushed away her plate, and her godbrother frowned. Hermione, who had settled beside her during some part of her zombie-like haze, caught her hand as she stood.

"Dahli?"

The Gryffindor couldn't meet the girl's concerned gaze.

"I'm fine, Maia," she mumbled. "Just tired. I'll see you in Potions, yeah?"

Before she could stop her again, Dahlia swiftly exited the hall. She couldn't process everything running through her head.

 _How could I have forgotten?_

Guilt weighed on her shoulders as she remembered the Grangers' last letter, which still lay somewhere in the bottom of her bag. Safiya had mentioned Sirius' offer to take her to see Godric's Hollow that weekend and followed the statement with a reminder she ought to be gentle with her normally jovial godfather, if she accepted. Dahlia had thought about it a lot, but hadn't made a decision one way or another, yet. She couldn't imagine what the man must be feeling. So much had happened in so short a time on top of the grief he always carried, and for herself, she hadn't quite consolidated the idea of Lily Evans and that of Lily Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World, in her mind.

She'd grown up believing the woman died on November 1st, on which she always listened to the cassette the police had salvaged from her old Beetle, along with the rest of her meagre effects.

Her longing for the mother she never knew used to be a very private thing for her, and for the first time since the anniversary of her death, she actually _knew_ enough to truly mourn the relationship they could have had.

Meanwhile, her peers whispered about the Witch-Who-Won and the Girl-Who-Lived like they weren't real people: the way one might regard the memory of Winston Churchill.

Dahlia expelled a frustrated sigh and rubbed her temple above her left eye, unconsciously tracing the puckered scar hidden beneath her fringe.

She wanted her mum, and for the first time in a very long while, she allowed herself to wish for her dad, too. The girl paused and looked around before ducking into an abandoned classroom. After a quick glance around to check for Peeves, the castle's resident poltergeist, she shoved her hand into her bag and pulled out the leather case protecting a plain, square mirror.

"Hello Sirius?"

The face remained blank for longer than usual, and then Dan Granger's face came into focus.

"Sorry, luv, he's trolleyed," he said apologetically, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

He didn't look so well, himself, Dahlia thought. Dark circles shadowed his lids and his jaw boasted an impressive amount of scruff.

"Oh," she mumbled. "All right. I can call him later."

Dan focused his gaze and frowned at his daughter's drawn features.

"What's wrong sweetheart?" he prodded gently. "Do I need to come over there and crack some skulls? I've got my cricket bat at the ready."

She couldn't help returning his crinkly smile, though hers came out more like a grimace.

"Probably the same thing wrong with Padfoot and Moony," she muttered. "Apparently, people treat Hallowe'en as a day of remembrance for my mother."

The dentist sighed.

"Yeah, I guessed that might be it, but I never like assuming," he admitted sadly. "The boys are taking it hard, too. They asked me to meet them in London for drinks yesterday. Ended up parking the car overnight and taking a train home, we were so pissed. Please remind me not to do that again. Your mum still not speaking to me."

Dahlia giggled despite herself at her adoptive dad's sulking. Safiya despised drink for more than just her faith's doctrines, and though Dan rarely went out 'with the lads,' she fully expected him to retain the majority of his reasoning and motor skills when he got back in. The woman never raised her voice to her family members, but she had a way of making one feel awfully small with her piercing stare, and Dahlia had witnessed firsthand her reaction to overindulgence on New Year's day, last year.

Dan had stumbled in through the front door and promptly tripped over the runner, falling flat on his face and laughing madly. Hermione and Dahlia had been eating breakfast at the time in front of the telly, and both broke into giggles that died upon noticing their mum's stern expression.

"Shower, change, guest room," she'd declared after he righted himself. "If you're going to behave like a teenaged boy, you shall be treated as such."

His smile vanished, and he spent the next two days pouting and wincing at turns while he got over a truly epic hangover.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Dahlia realised she'd been staring into space and shifted uncomfortably, making the dusty old desk she'd chosen as her seat wobble underneath her.

"No. Yes," she huffed. "I don't know. I wanted to listen to the CD you got me, but my walkman doesn't work here."

He made a pensive sound, and the scenery around him shifted sickeningly, blurring into a wash of colour that made Dahlia's eyes cross as he left what she thought might have been the sitting room. The mirror stopped moving, and she found herself staring at the downstairs study's popcorn-plastered ceiling. Shuffling and a few muttered curses sounded in the background, and then the first strains of her favourite album washed away everything else. Dan gave her a sad smile as he repositioned the mirror, and the sound clarified from its somewhat tinny ring.

She didn't move, and Dan didn't say anything until he heard Dahlia sigh at the clang of the quarter-hour bells.

"Got to go?"

"Yeah," she said with a watery smile.

If her eyes were a little red-rimmed, he didn't comment.

"Go on. Give us a call later, won't you? We're going to be headed to London later to hear that bill."

"All right," she agreed.

"I love you, sweetheart."

Dahlia worried her lower lip for a moment - a habit she'd picked up from Hermione - and responded in a whisper.

"Love you too… Daddy."

His answering smile lit his whole face, and she had to fight again to hold back the flood.

She was really getting tired of feeling so raw, all the time. She never used to be so weepy.

* * *

Hermione tried not to scowl as she stirred her Forgetfulness potion. The moment her sister fled the Great Hall, everyone erupted in whispers. It had started innocently enough as mostly sympathetic murmurs, but someone's morbid curiosity inevitably got the better of them.

"Do you think she remembers what You-Know-Who looked like?"

"I bet it wasn't Lily at all. It can't just be coincidence she was the only one who survived, right? _He_ never left _anyone_ alive."

"I read an article about how it must have been dark magic, and all that time everyone thought she'd died she was learning from Death Eaters on the run."

It made her want to hex everything in sight. To make things worse, Professor Snape seemed particularly annoyed by the students' talkativeness and general excitement.

She respected the man's genius. He might not be much of a lecturer, but she observed everything he did, and the man definitely possessed a gift for his subject. She even saw some of Lily's techniques when he privately coached his Slytherins and wondered if perhaps they might have been taught by a shared professor during their own schooling.

He spent most of the morning sneering and throwing scathing remarks at the Gryffindors - Currently Seamus Finnegan, who shrank beneath the man's ire.

"Does this look like a medium-fine powder, Finnegan?" he demanded, pinching the boy's barely pulverised mistletoe berries and letting them fall back into the mortar.

He pointed his wand at the redhead's cauldron and its contents vanished.

"Begin again. I do hope you finish in time."

He wouldn't. They only had twenty minutes left before 10:30, and the stewing portion took a full thirty minutes on its own.

To her surprise and relief, however, he either did not notice Dahlia and Neville adding their specially prepared ingredients along with the bits unchanged in her mother's formulas, or did not feel like targeting her that morning.

Hermione wryly thought it more likely even he wouldn't risk abusing the Girl-Who-Lived (she scoffed internally at the ridiculous title) on the anniversary of her orphaning. Although, she frowned slightly, his commentary toward her sister seemed incredibly tame compared to some of the things she'd heard in class or in passing from Hufflepuffs.

In any case, Dahlia's stiff shoulders seemed to relax a little while she focused on her work, and by the end of the period, she seemed a little less defensive. Hermione caught up with her before she could rush to her next lesson, and she bodily pulled her and Neville - who had become a bit more withdrawn than usual as October wound to a close - into an alcove between the dungeons and Entrance Hall to impart rib-cracking hugs on them both.

She hardly saw Dahlia for the rest of her day, only passing and smiling - she bracingly and Dahlia thinly - at one another in the corridors. As the Slytherin expected she might, her sister didn't join them for lunch, and Neville worriedly told her during their pre-dinner library study session that she skived off History, her last class of the day.

They cut their homework short to look for her, though Daphne and Tracey begged off, and spent the remaining hours until seven o'clock searching the corridors fruitlessly. Neville even braved speaking to Lavender and Parvati, whom she knew teased him fairly often, to check if Dahlia had gone up to bed early, but to their dismay, her sheets reportedly looked undisturbed. They finally tried her mirror, but received no answer.

She worried throughout the feast and as she got ready for bed, but a call to her parents made her tamp down her desire to bring Dahlia's absenteeism to Professor McGonagall's attention. Her father gently explained her sister dealt with stress and grief differently than she did, and might not appreciate her intrusion. She'd wanted to feel offended at the insinuation, at first. They'd gone through so much together, and they had needed one another badly after _it_ happened, but he reminded her it wasn't the same. She'd never been through what Dahlia was feeling, and she ought to trust her sister to reach out if she needed comfort.

So, weary and anxious, she returned to her dormitory after the feast with the multitude of ice cream she'd consumed sitting unpleasantly in her belly. It took her a long while to fall asleep, even after she drew herself a lavender-scented bath, and when she dreamed, it was of Dahlia calling to her from that dirty countertop under the crumbling bridge.

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, Hogwarts' resident pranksters knew a lot more than they were given credit for. Despite their vehement insistence to the contrary, both achieved excellent marks. Their frequent escapades into widespread humiliation and hilarity rarely caused any real harm to anyone (unless the victim truly deserved it), and they almost always got away with whatever they attempted.

Just the week before, they entertained the entirety of the breakfasting Great Hall with a potion-compelled musical revue performed by random wizards and witches throughout. It would have been perfectly innocent, had it not been an incredibly raunchy rendition of a well-loved drinking song. Professor McGonagall had flushed to her grey roots and made them turn out their pockets, but no amount of prodding or searching provided the proof she needed to put them in detention.

Unfortunately, Oliver Wood had been caught in the crossfire by complete accident, so he readily took his head-of-house's suggestion to penalise them during practices. They had tried to convince him Dahlia should also have been held culpable for her part in the prank as potioneer (in an effort to win a little leniency for themselves), but the burly fifth-year took one look at the girl's suddenly innocent-looking face and promptly reamed them out for trying to implicate their 'secret weapon,' as he referred to her.

Dahlia had smiled beatifically at them when they collapsed, wheezing and sweating profusely, onto the damp lawn the moment they dismounted their brooms two hours later.

This, more than anything, cemented their approval of the cheeky girl, and as the weeks passed, they grew rather fond of Potter and her subtly wicked sense of humour between their secretive brewing sessions and Quidditch practices. As a result, they tended to keep an eye on her, remembering vividly her first miserable days in the castle. So when she failed to show up for lunch, dinner, or with Neville at curfew, hey quietly retreated to their dormitory.

"Right," George said, crossing his arms as he surveyed their dormmates.

Lee Jordan, one of their willing accomplices more often than not, took one look at the twins' faces and gave a brief salute before vacating his bed. Kenneth Towler, Ian Claverdon, David Nolton, and Aamir Loonat required more prodding, however.

"Out, you lot," Fred insisted, twirling his wand casually.

"We need the room for a bit," his brother finished.

With a lot of groaning and muttered complaints about the tyrannical tricksters' disregard for their comfort, the boys filed out to find other haunts. The moment the door shut behind them, Fred began casting spells, effectively locking them in and warding the space against any potential eavesdroppers. After a few tests to ensure they'd settled properly, George bent over his trunk and carefully worked loose a section of lining at the very bottom, revealing a sheaf of yellowed old parchment.

They spread it out on his bed, unfolding the many sections until it covered nearly the entire surface, and speaking in tandem, uttered:

"We solemnly swear we're up to no good."

"Right," Fred breathed, squinting at the many black dots traversing the corridors outlined on the moving map. "Dahlia Potter…"

"Where are you, ickle firstie?" his brother muttered, holding a magnifying glass over it, methodically scanning it in sections.

It took several minutes, but they finally breathed a sigh of relief as they located her minutely labelled dot amidst a jumble of others.

"Wait-" Fred frowned, squinting at the image with his head cocked to the side. "That's the girls' dormitory. Katie just said a bit ago she hasn't been in."

"Huh," the other said, twisting the sheet to better examine her position. "Well, we can't go up there. Caterwauling charm'll go off, and Percy'd pin us with a detention, for sure. Can't afford that right now. We've got stuff cooking."

They shook their heads at their elder brother's obstinate adherence to every rule ever written and utter disdain for anything remotely resembling fun.

"Could ask Angie or Katie."

"They'd think we were going to take the Mickey or something," George countered.

Fred hummed tunelessly while he considered, and both arrived at the same conclusion a moment later.

"Brooms."

"Mischief Managed," they whispered, and course charted, they hid their treasure away before pulling their well-loved brooms from under their beds.

After bundling up against the chilly night, they dismantled the charms on the door, threw open the window, and flew out into the darkness. The wizards hovered until their eyes adjusted to the starlight and slowly began the dubious task of peeking through the windows of the girls' dorms, starting with Dahlia's.

Fred wondered belatedly whether their solution was a little more hare-brained than usual. If any of the older girls caught them, they likely wouldn't survive long enough to receive detention. Alicia Spinnet, for example, would happily curse them five ways to Sunday and bury the bodies where no one would look. Fortunately, the late hour had already called most everyone to bed, and George felt relieved not to feel _too_ much like a peeping Tom when they only caught a few glimpses of pyjama-clad witch here and there. He briefly wondered whether witches even walked around naked (or as good as) like their male counterparts did in their own dorms and changing rooms, but promptly pushed the idle musing away. They had a job to do, and broomsticks were probably among the worst places imaginable to experience the side-effects normally accompanying such thoughts.

To their dismay, however, their search yielded no sign of their missing seeker.

"Maybe the map messed up, like it does with that Peter marker," Fred whispered as they drifted closer to commiserate.

George shook his head.

"It's never been wrong since we got it, except for that. I'm still not convinced he's not a ghost the others have been good enough to scare into staying out of sight," he argued. "You know, out of respect for the living, and all that."

"Well, where is she then?" Fred frowned, a tinge of worry creeping into his voice. "I know she's tiny, but I mean, we're _us._ If we don't find her, no one will."

A light pierced the velvety blackness several dozen feet away, and both blinked against the sudden onslaught.

"Who's there?"

The twins squinted at the shadow behind the narrow beam, and it slanted away enough to make out a pale, heart-shaped face set with vividly green, almond-shaped eyes. Both breathed a relieved sigh and slowly flew up to join her on the narrow, crenellated walkway ringing Gryffindor tower just beneath its sloped, slate-tiled roof. They landed lightly and deposited their brooms behind them before taking seats at either side of the small first-year.

"Granger's been going spare looking for you. Ickle Neville looked like someone trod on his toad," Fred said lightly.

"Even Brown looked worried," George teased. "I didn't know she worried about anything aside from her nail varnish."

"She's not that bad," Dahlia said, smiling, though the expression vanished quickly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be a bother. I just needed to get away for a bit."

The boys exchanged a look over her head.

"On the roof?" Fred prodded doubtfully.

Dahlia shrugged.

"I went for a fly, and Wood said not to do it where anyone could see, so I sort of did a few laps around the spires," she explained.

"Uh huh," George snorted. "So why are you still up here, then? It's been dark for ages. Also, why's it so warm, here? It was bloody cold a second ago."

The girl pulled a large glass jar from her bag, revealing a bright blue flame licking merrily at its walls. The heat intensified momentarily before she put it away again.

"Hermione taught me."

They didn't press her to answer the rest of his question.

"Soooo," one began after an awkward pause. "Want to talk about it?"

He winced a little at how reluctant the offer sounded, but the witch snorted and rolled her eyes, recognising his hesitance for discomfort rather than unwillingness to listen.

"Not likely," she said wryly.

Another moment of quiet passed, although a smidge more comfortably than the last one.

"Want to do something fun, then?" Fred offered. "We've been meaning to set something up for Flitwick. We owe him a late birthday present."

"We were thinking about making his little book stack complain about being a pedestal," George elaborated. "Or charming the portraits in his classroom to sing rude songs in Gobbledegook."

She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, and her brow furrowed for a moment.

"Actually, I do, but not for Flitwick. I want to try something I read about, but I can't manage it on my own," she said, an edge of determination colouring her voice.

The boys grinned.

"Yeah, all right," they agreed in tandem. "Lead the way, Milady."

Following her lead, they mounted their brooms and flew back toward the dorms. She charmed open her window and slipped inside nimbly.

"I'll meet you at your window in five," she whispered out at them when they explained why they couldn't come in with her.

"Do we need to bring anything?"

She shook her head.

"Just your wands."

Intrigued, they nodded and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Dahlia to wash her face and change from her robes to denims, overlarge jumper, hat, scarf, and gloves.

"Boys?" she whispered a short while later, rounding the tower.

She heard the rattle of the leaded panes in their window as it swung closed, and they came into view a moment later.

"So, Mistress of Mischief-" Fred began.

"What's your fancy?" George finished.

"A bit of complicated magic," she whispered back. "Let's go."

She directed her broom downward and led them silently to land on top of the East Wing, whereupon she dashed off across the tiles, barely making a noise as she fell into the shadows cast by the astronomy tower to their northwest.

"Here," she whispered, pausing beside a latched skylight. " _Alohomora."_

It popped open with a gentle click, and the twins swung down to land in a dusty room that might have been a lounge at one point. Dahlia took off again without pausing to explain where they were going, ducking through the rarely travelled corridors of the virtually abandoned wing until she stopped beside a moonlit window two floors down.

"Do whatever it is you do to make sure we're in the clear," she whispered, nodding toward the brighter light at the end of the corridor, which opened up onto the grand staircase.

They nodded and turned their backs to her to check the map, and upon receiving their nod, she pressed her hand against the glass. It fogged a little from the warmth of her touch, and then to the twins' surprise, the shining surface darkened until her reflection stared back at her. A shiver ran down their spines as it breathed against its side of the glass, pressing its finger to the condensation to spell out a question:

 _Where can I find the impossible?_

"I think it's in my basement," Dahlia answered with a playful smile. "Let me go upstairs and check."

Her reflection grinned, and the witch's fingers, still pressed against the glass, sank into its surface. Wide-eyed, the twins followed her through to find themselves in a softly lit room. Like in the Great Hall, the ceiling seemed to open up into the heavens, but the chamber behind the pretend-window held only one piece of furniture.

A circular table rose to waist-height at its very centre, and upon it stood the castle and its grounds in miniature, reproduced in a perfect replica complete with gently waving, velvet-like grass and wind-swept trees.

"Woah," the boys breathed in unison.

"What is that?" Fred asked, staring around in wonder.

The witch grinned.

"I asked Professor Flitwick how the staircases worked, and he showed Hermione and me under the condition we never told anyone about it," she explained softly. "I'm entrusting the secret to you."

"Does it always ask the same question?" George queried, nodding toward the window, which appeared to be nothing more than a gilt-framed, arched mirror from this end.

At least, it looked normal if one ignored the fact it reflected the room in reverse. It was a bit eerie to look at, thought Fred.

"As far as I know," Dahlia replied. "It's from an M. C. Escher quote. Muggle artist who liked to draw impossible things. It must have been something else when they made this, though. He was only born in the late 1800's."

Fred leaned over the castle, which stood nearly as tall as him from its pedestal, and peered into some of the windows.

"So what's this have to do with staircases?"

The first-year strode forward and rapped her wand against the roof of the Great Tower, which housed the headmaster's office and overlooked the Great Hall and grounds. With a gentle _click_ , a seam of light spread from where her wand touched, bisecting the castle from that point. One half silently swung open, revealing the castle's interior in perfect detail.

"This is incredible," he murmured as one of the staircases moved to connect with a different corridor. "So, what? This controls the stairs?"

"Yes," Dahlia affirmed. "I need you to promise not to mess with this on your own, though."

They pouted.

"Professor Flitwick was very clear," she insisted. "He said tampering could damage things. Like, the vanishing step might not just catch your ankle. It could just disappear entirely, and you might fall to your death."

Fred and George exchanged a silent look before nodding and returning their attention to the magical marvel before them.

"So what are we doing here, if we're not tampering?"

Dahlia worried her lip for a moment before drawing a leather-bound journal from her back pocket.

"We _are_ tampering, but only because I know it'll work. Someone's done it before, and it won't hurt anything."

"You're positive?" Fred pressed, excitement sparking in his eyes. "We're not going to blow up the castle or anything?"

"Positive," the witch said with a tight smile. "Look-"

She laid the journal down on the table's edge and lit her wand with a whisper, turning toward the back. Neat, feminine script covered the page. A sketch of a flight of stairs occupied the lower left hand corner, along with a rendering of a stargazer lily in full bloom. The top portion of the page looked almost illegible upon first glance, but George eventually discerned a pattern.

"Coded shorthand?"

"Yes," Dahlia nodded. "And no, I'm not sharing the cipher. This is the bit you need to read."

Her brow furrowed as she pressed her wand against the page, and the second half, the portion beside the drawing, rearranged itself to spell out relatively simple instructions.

"It takes more than one person to cast," she clarified, interrupting their silent dialogue of glances and micro-expressions.

"What's it do?" Fred finally asked.

"It's a surprise," Dahlia smirked. "C'mon, gentlemen. This is something that hasn't been done in _ages_ \- not since our parents attended. It'll be brilliant."

"All right," they agreed. "Show us what to do."

Working carefully, the first-year followed instructions they couldn't read to wordlessly rearrange the staircases before pointing out a series of subtle indentations set into the wall outside Dumbledore's miniature office.

She consulted the diagram carefully before pointing out two among the pattern.

"In a moment, you'll put your wands there and there," she directed. "Then we'll cast the spell written here."

Their red heads leaned together over the page, and the twins muttered to themselves several times, practicing the twisting wrist motion until they met with Dahlia's approval.

"Remember, you have to start twisting when you begin incanting, and you must maintain rhythm, or it won't work," she said. "On three?"

They nodded, practiced with her once more, and finally placed their wands to her specifications. Once she felt satisfied with them, she drew her own wands and pressed each into its own indentation.

"One, two-"

" _Canticum Anámesa Interastra,"_ they said together.

A brief glow lit the stairwell, and Dahlia grinned after casting a few spells the boys didn't recognise, working from the coded portion of her book.

"Done?" George prompted when she gently restored the castle to its whole, closed state.

"Yes," she said with an odd gleam to her eyes. "Let's go."

With that, she led them back the way they came, through the skylight and around the ramparts to Gryffindor Tower, where she waved good-night.

"Thank you," she said softly just before they turned to fly to their own dorm.

They smiled identically at her, answering together.

"Anytime, Milady."

She grinned at their sweetly mocking genuflection and curled up in her bed shortly thereafter, excited for the morning.

* * *

Author's Notes

As promised, I'm posting an extra chapter this week to celebrate. Shout out to Philosophize for being lucky 100! I'll post another bonus chapter for the next fifty reviews, and so on, because y'all are so awesome.

Reviews, Q & A

I'm really glad everyone who's commented about him seems to be liking my rendition of Quirrell. His character is pretty important to this story, so I think you'll enjoy his evolution.

If you like a non-slavish, non-stuttering Quirrell, I highly recommend checking out Less Wrong's _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ , if you have not already. It's a fantastic read. Epic in length, however, so be careful not to stay up for days on end trying to read it all. Seriously, it's 661,619 words with all parts and pieces. DO NOT binge to excess. Like I did. So many regrets.


	15. It Only Ever Pours

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

 _ **ALERT!**_ _This is **the second of 2** posts this week in celebration of 100 reviews, so please back up one chapter if you came straight here._

* * *

Chapter Fifteen: It Only Ever Pours

* * *

"Nev," Dahlia whispered urgently, her hand poised to clamp over his mouth in case he shouted.

She'd rushed up to the first-year boys' dorm as soon as she finished dressing, and while it was early, it wasn't _too_ early for the other boys to start their days, and she did not want to be interrupted that morning. Fortunately, Neville came to without much prodding and smiled broadly at the sight of her once he blinked the sleep out of his eyes.

"Dahli?" he whispered. "Where were you? We were worried!"

"Sorry, I know," she winced. "C'mon, I'll show you what I was up to, but you have to get dressed. We need to go get Hermione, too."

He climbed out from beneath his covers with a shiver. The castle had become bitterly cold in the early mornings and late at night. Still, he moved quickly enough they were able to depart the tower well before most of their housemates woke, and before long, Dahlia was leading him through the many secret passages the twins showed her.

"Hello Hermione," she said into her mirror, stopping Neville short before they emerged on the ground floor.

A few moments later, the mirror darkened and her sister's warm features gazed back at her.

"Where were you?" she asked without preamble. "I was worried sick!"

"Yes, yes," Dahlia sighed. "Very sorry, I know I should have told you I was going to head off for a bit, but right now you need to get ready and come upstairs. We'll be in the Entrance Hall."

"We?"

Neville peeked over Dahlia's shoulder.

"Good morning," he said softly.

They heard the Slytherin take a deep breath and expel a long, exasperated sigh.

"Fine," she agreed. "Give me a few minutes."

By 6:04 Hermione ascended the last step leading up from the dungeons and looked around to spot Dahlia and Neville looking at her from the mouth of one of Hagrid's enormous jack o'lanterns guarding the main door.

"What are we doing in there?" she hissed, grimacing at the slimy texture of the raw gourd's flesh under her fingers as she crawled in to join them.

"Shh," Dahlia whispered. "Just watch."

"Watch for _what?_ "

With a groan, the shorter girl physically grabbed her shoulders and rotated her until she faced the grand staircase.

Hermione let out a soft gasp.

Frothy garlands of stargazer lilies dotted with smaller, bell-shaped lily of the valley wound around the curving banister, climbing the smoothly polished wood up and out of sight. It took her a moment to understand the odd colouring of the marble steps, which seemed to to have been painted in places with bold black stripes between risers.

"Piano keys?" she murmured. "What did you do?"

"Hush and listen," Dahlia laughed, and Hermione begrudgingly settled down.

After several long minutes, a familiar string of notes floated to them, ringing as clearly as if someone played a baby grand beside them.

"Is that-" she frowned, listening as the music paused for a moment before starting again, the tempo changing as whomever had triggered the enchantment continued their descent. "Queen?"

Recognition dawned on Hermione's face at Dahlia's wistful nod, and her hands clapped over her mouth as tears filled her eyes.

" _Lily of the Valley?"_

Neville cleared his throat, and Dahila explained in a somewhat huskier voice.

"It's a song by the muggle rock band, Queen," she breathed. "My mother and father liked them. You know how Sirius said the Marauders were pranksters?"

He nodded.

"Well, after Dad stopped being a git and grew up, Mum helped them out a few times. She wrote about this one of your journals. This was their goodbye prank on the day they graduated. Queen was Dad's favourite band, and the lilies and song choice were to recognize her part int he spell crafting. I-"

She swallowed around a hitch and smiled sadly.

"I wanted to do something for them, you know?"

Dahlia took a deep breath and looked at the knees of her stockings.

"I… I know nobody will understand what it means, but if Mum and Dad were anything like Fred and George, they must have liked making people smile. I thought-"

"Oh, Dahlia."

Hermione's arms wrapped around her middle too tightly, and she felt Neville's hand on her shoulder.

"It's perfect," her sister murmured into her hair. "I'm sure this is exactly how they would have wanted you to celebrate them."

They remained concealed in the hollowed out pumpkin watching as first professors, then students trickled from their quarters, all smiling broadly for the song playing throughout the castle, its rhythm changing depending on who was on the stairs. The melody became indecipherable as more people came down for breakfast, but everyone sported a bright grin by the time they got to the Entrance Hall.

A few of the professors, Hermione noticed, tried to hide misty-eyed gazes and sniffles.

When the majority of the crowd had made its way into the Great Hall, the trio slipped out of the pumpkin to join them. Hermione performed a quick cleaning charm (Dahlia's was still a bit too harsh for use on anything less durable than a stone floor), and walked in together.

It was all anyone could talk about.

Dahlia tucked into her breakfast with fervour. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been so hungry. She likely would not have looked up from her meal, at all, if she hadn't recognised Fred and George's flaming hair in her periphery.

They stared down at her intently, and Dahlia fought the urge to squirm while a series of emotions too quick for her to place flashed across their faces. Eventually, they shook their heads as one and propped their chins on the heels of their hands, opposite elbows planted on the table.

To her relief, they didn't say anything, but Hermione shrewdly looked between the older Gryffindors and her sister after everyone went back to eating.

After a while, the headmaster stood up at the front of the Hall, and everyone quieted.

"To the brilliant persons responsible for today's delightful good-morning, fifteen points, each," he said warmly. "Only once in all my years as headmaster have I seen such a beautiful example of magic. Thank you."

Dahlia, Fred and George hid their elation as the hall broke out in enthusiastic applause from nearly all the students and the majority of the staff. A few still looked teary, to Hermione's view. Snape, however, stood out from his colleagues in his unnatural pallor.

She worried her lower lip. Her head-of-house frustrated her to no end. He almost looked like he'd contracted the Flu, or a wizarding equivalent, but something about his face didn't read as _ill_ to her, at least not in the physical sense. She pushed the feeling aside to worry about later and settled into her usual morning routine, satisfied in her sister's return to happiness.

The post arrived in the usual flurry of feathers and parchment. She skimmed a brief summary of the Children's Protection Act presented the previous day, finished off a pot of chai, and at 8:30, bid her sister and Neville goodbye to wend her way toward Transfiguration with Ravenclaw.

She claimed her usual seat beside Tracey and Daphne and laid out her homework and textbook. 9:00 came and went, and chatter broke out over the normally ordered classroom when, still, Professor McGonagall didn't show. At 9:15, the door finally opened to admit the stern woman. She swept gracefully to the blackboard, smoothed a stray, steel-coloured curl into the low chignon at the nape of her neck, and peered around at them all with red, blotchy eyes.

"My apologies for my lateness. Please pair off and practice the softening and hardening spells we learned last lesson," she said primly. "After that, you may try sculpting your clay-"

At her word, a greyish lump appeared in front of each student.

"By combining these spells with the restructuring charm, as we learned last week," she instructed, gazing around at them all. "Understood?"

With that, she took her seat, and the class obediently got to work. Hermione watched her out of the corner of her eye, however, and could have sworn she saw the professor twirling a sprig of white flowers in her hands. She didn't move from her desk for the rest of the lesson, and though her students threw her curious looks throughout, no one dared ask about her tardiness or apparent melancholy.

Hermione stood when the bells rang, cast a final hardening charm on her poorly rendered (but perfectly spelled) sculpture of a kitten, and went to the professor's desk to turn it in.

"Miss Granger."

She paused after putting her sculpture down on the tray laid out for their attempts at art.

"Professor?"

"Do stay a moment, if you would."

She nodded mutely, and took a seat at the nearest desk until the last of her classmates filed out and the door closed behind them.

"Miss Granger," the wizened witch said crisply, surveying her charge with her mouth pursed in a thin line. "I wish to discuss something sensitive with you. Something I'm sure Miss Potter would not likely speak about in my presence based on our unfortunate habit of interacting most when she's already gotten into trouble for willful rule-breaking, well-intentioned or otherwise."

The young Slytherin sat up straighter.

"Yes, ma'am?"

A very uncomfortable expression crossed McGonagall's face.

"I would rather not… I hate to intrude. Merlin knows James Potter was an intensely private person, but-" she sighed heavily. "But Lily Evans-"

The witch took a deep breath.

"I would just appreciate your reassurance, Miss Granger, that you and your sister are observing safety measures if you choose to pursue Lily's works," she finally managed. "I would be committing an egregious wrong against my favourite past pupils if I didn't say something, and one or both of you were hurt."

Hermione regarded her nervously.

" _If_ Dahlia and I decided to experiment," she finally hedged, careful not to admit to anything.

She felt fairly certain McGonagall had Dahlia's best interests in mind, but her personal definition of how to best care for her students and her duty as an administrator likely put her in an awkward position more often than not in regards to some students.

"We would most definitely seek a more experienced opinion before attempting anything," she concluded. "But we appreciate your concern, Professor."

The Gryffindor smiled weakly.

"Of course, Miss Granger. Do you require a note for your next class?"

Hermione glanced at the inside of her wrist out of habit even as she shook her head.

"No thank you, Professor," she said politely. "I have a free period, now."

"Very well. Off you go."

The Slytherin spent most of the morning in a pensive state, speaking little, daydreaming through Professor Binns' lecture, and marching halfway to the north courtyard's door before she remembered the prefects had told her Flying class had been cancelled due to weather. She felt a bit at loose ends while she worked her way through her remaining homework.

Dahlia didn't show up for afternoon tea, though she rarely did since she started practicing Quidditch every other morning. She opted to kip when she could to make up for the hours of sleep lost to Oliver Wood's madness. Neville silently sat beside Hermione halfway through her second cup of lavender Earl Grey. A few seats down, Malfoy sneered at the Gryffindor's appearance, but didn't say anything.

After that, her day progressed as it normally did, but she couldn't shake the strange feeling clinging to her. Something she'd seen, something she couldn't quite isolate from the multitude of information in her mind, felt like it should have been significant, and she couldn't help thinking she'd forgotten something vital.

* * *

"What the hell, Potter?!"

Dahlia stopped short on the stairs. She'd been enjoying the walk a lot more than she normally did for the sound accompanying it. The Gryffindor turned around, Neville at her elbow, to find a Hufflepuff boy she only vaguely recognised glaring up at her from a few steps below, a rumpled letter clutched in his fist.

"Erm-" she wracked her brain.

She couldn't remember doing or saying anything to the blonde boy staring her down.

"Sorry, have we met?"

The boy looked mortally offended, and Neville winced.

"Good Lord!" he complained. "We share _three_ classes, Potter! I habitually ask for your take on things in Transfiguration."

The girl flushed to her roots.

"I'm really sorry, erm-" she tried to focus.

Frustratingly, it felt like that was becoming progressively more difficult as time went on.

"Stan-" his face coloured and she tried again. "Er- Malcolm _Stebbins_?"

"Yes!" he bit out impatiently.

"Look, I'm really, _really_ sorry about that," she said as politely as she could, beginning to feel strained as more and more eyes turned to watch their confrontation. "I've been under a lot of stress lately."

"Yes, I can see that!" he snapped, waving his letter. "You must have been terribly preoccupied trying to _help_ us muggleborns."

Dahlia's brain ground to a halt.

"What?" she gaped.

The boy shoved the envelope into her hand, and she opened it carefully, feeling sour dread take hold in her gut.

 _Dear Malcolm,_

 _I've enclosed a copy of the bill presented yesterday to the Wizengamot. My editor isn't allowing anyone to print it verbatim, but I wanted to make sure you knew what's really going on._

 _I know I was talking it up, before, but this isn't at all what Fudge said it would be. Please spread the word. I'm going to work on my friends at other publications and see if there's anything I can do without getting myself fired. If people don't start hearing the truth, and soon, we're in for a world of trouble. Don't worry, Mum and Dad are fine. They're on holiday in Canada, right now, and I'd let you know if anything changed._

 _All my love,_

 _Karen_

Dahlia flipped to the thick parchment behind the white stationery, and her eyes widened as she soaked in the carefully printed gothic text with growing trepidation.

.

 _ **Children's Protection Act**_

 _ **20th Session, 63rd Wizengamot**_

 _ **Elizabeth, II 1991**_

 _ **Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge**_

 _ **OFFICE OF THE MINISTER FOR MAGIC - LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE**_

 **.**

Her eyes skipped over the short table of contents.

 **.**

 _A_

 _BILL_

 _[As presented in session]_

 _TO_

 _Make provision for the safety and care of all magical children._

 _BE IT ENACTED by the Minister for Magic Cornelius Oswald Fudge, by and with the advice of his Cabinet, the Lords and Ladies Temporal, and the Public, in this present Wizengamot assembled, and by the authority of the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, as follows:_

 _1 - **Integration of magical children born to non-magical parents**_

 _The Children's Protection Act intends as follows._

 _Support magical children born to non-magical parents._

 _Assignment of Ministerial liaison to each child upon its first instance of accidental magic._

 _. 2(1)(a). Expansion of magical detection network to better monitor activity previously regarded insignificant._

 _._ _2(2)(a). Creation of Children's Integration Office as part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement._

 _._ _2(3)(a). Provision to fund Offices through the allocation of tax monies and surplus Grants by Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

 _Education of non-magical parents of their children's gifts._

 _._ _2(1)(b). Assignment of Ministerial experts in muggle affairs to evaluate the most comprehensive method of opening lines of communication and trust._

 _._ _2(2)(b). Codification of muggle-worthy literature compliant with guidelines set forth by the International Statute of Secrecy._

 _Integration of first generation witches and wizards into Wizarding society._

 _._ _2(1)(c). Creation of pre-Hogwarts institutions designed to educate first-generation witches and wizards of their history, laws and culture._

 _._ _2(2)(c). Provision to fund pre-Hogwarts institutions through the dissolution of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and St Mungos Muggle-Side Emergency Response Interception Programme._

 _._ _2(3)(c). Creation of Muggleborn Mentorship programme to ensure smooth transition between pre-Hogwarts and upper level magical schooling._

 _Maintenance of Secrecy_

 _._ _2(1)(d). Amendment to Muggle Obliviation Act of 1821 to omit section 1(2)(f) disallowing Muggle Memory Modification in the case of a family member in direct relation to a magical child._

 _._ _2(2)(d). Provision to allow non-magical parents to waive their first-generation magical children's access to the magical world, whereupon Law Enforcement may modify the memories of any involved non-magical guardian or family member._

 _._ _2(3)(d). Provision to allow non-magical guardians the choice of binding the magic of any first-generation magical child in the event they waive said child's right to integrate into Magical society._

 _._ _2(4)(d). Provision to assign Magical caretakers designated for all first-generation magical children whose non-magical guardians choose to embrace their children's inherent Gifts._

 _._ _2(5)(d). Provision to allow for the modification of non-magical children's memories and that of their families in the event their non-magical guardians choose integration in order to ease the transition process and protect Secrecy._

 _ **2 - Impact of this Act**_

 _The Ministry must, at the first instance of accidental magic in a first-generation magical child (defined as lacking a parent or grandparent of magical lineage), take on responsibility for the welfare and wellbeing of that magical child._

 _The Ministry must make arrangements to provide for the future of all magical children by integrating first-generation magical witches and wizards at the earliest opportunity._

 _The Ministry must uphold the International Statute of Secrecy per its agreement with the International Confederation of Wizards._

 _ **3 - Extent, commencement and short title**_

 _This Act extends England, Wales and Scotland._

 _Section 1 comes into force at the end of the period three months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed and shall apply to all first-generation witches and wizards within the Ministry's jurisdiction under the age of seventeen._

 _This section comes into force on the day on which this Act is passed._

 _This Act may be cited as the Children's Protection Act or Dahlia Potter's Act._

.

Dahlia's hands shook. Her ears rung and her mouth went dry. She felt the colour draining from her face as behind her, Neville shuffled worriedly from foot to foot, unable to see past her hair to read for himself.

"Wh-what?" she muttered, scanning through it again.

No - It definitely didn't make any more sense the second time.

She paused upon rereading her name among the carefully worded poison splashed across the page.

"No," she scowled, giving it back to Malcolm, who looked more scared than angry after watching her reaction. "You have to believe I'd _never_ want that. I love Hermione's mum and dad too much - _My_ mum and dad."

Stebbins' face bled an ugly shade of maroon.

"It's got _your_ name on it!" he cried, his voice cracking. "You have to do something about it!"

"What am I supposed to do?" she sputtered. "I asked Fudge to do a better job looking out for us, not-"

She searched around for a foul enough word, but her jarred mind couldn't provide one.

"Not endorse state-funded baby-snatching!"

"Then you should have left well enough alone!" Malcolm snarled and advanced a step to glare down at her, towering over her although she occupied the riser above his.

She could feel his hot breath on her face, but she refused to let his proximity cow her.

"What would you have done?!" she demanded, her own voice rising to a near-shriek. "Our classmate died! Hermione was almost killed! He was supposed to take responsibility, not- Not this!"

"WELL, FIX IT, POTTER! YOU'RE THE BLEEDING GIRL-WHO-LIVED! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, IF YOU REALLY CARE!"

"I DON'T KNOW HOW!"

"FIGURE IT OUT!"

"OI!"

Both flinched when Neville bellowed scant inches from their faces, and Stebbins took a step back in surprise as the pudgy boy's wand shot sparks, singeing through his pocket and leaving a scorch mark on the floor. Every set of eyes in the stairway fixed on him and his face turned scarlet.

"Y- You're out of line, Malcolm. Back off," he said loudly as he brushed at the smoking fabric over his thigh. "Dahlia didn't do this."

"What do you know?" the Hufflepuff spat. "You're a spoiled pureblood just like her dad was."

He stormed off, leaving Dahlia to follow numbly as Neville pulled her onto the landing, down the corridor, and into an empty classroom. Her godbrother shifted his weight from one foot to the other before anxiously pushing her into a patchy old chair whose cushion had seen better days. She lifted her hand to her forehead to rub at the scar over her eye, and a barely audible whimper left her lips.

"What just happened?" she whispered. "This isn't- You know it isn't."

"Of course I know," he said shakily. "I'm not sure how they could possibly think this was- There's no way you would-"

He looked around nervously. The moment he'd closed the door, her breath began to shallow into quick, ineffective gasps. Her eyes clamped shut, and Neville barely made out muttered French and Spanish.

"D-Dahli?" he squeaked as her hair began dancing around her face of its own volition. "Dahlia?"

She went utterly silent, and the boy forced himself to stand perfectly still as a soft but insistent, high-pitched hum rang in his ears and the old furniture littering the room creaked ominously.

"I'm-" she said after a while, her breathing calming a little.

The tendrils of black hair brushing her cheeks and shoulders stilled.

"I'm fine. We have to call Sirius. Do you have your mirror? Mine's in my bag upstairs."

They'd been on their way to practice with Quirrell and Flitwick when the Hufflepuff from her Transfiguration class stopped them.

"Er-"

He rummaged in his pockets and quickly passed over what resembled a leather bifold wallet.

"Hello Sirius?" he asked it, eager to do anything he could to help while Dahlia's lips resumed their muttered mantra of what he thought might be verb conjugations. "Padfoot, we need you!"

The secondary, emergency-only passphrase elicited an almost immediate response.

"Neville?" Sirius' face appeared in the small square. "What's the matter? Are you hurt? Are the girls all right?"

The man's voice rose in pitch as fear hardened his features.

"It's Dahli, Pads," he whimpered. "She's not good. Some random Hufflepuff just accused her of being behind that Act. Did you read it? I haven't got to, but Dahlia sort of lost it. Didn't you have it ahead of time?"

"Fudge's arse-lickers gave us an 'earlier draft' by 'accident.' We were blindsided, too," the wizard answered in a low growl. "I'm at the Ministry, now. Been here since yesterday afternoon petitioning to get it thrown out, but someone's already made the rounds greasing palms and everyone else on their side is either too bloody principled to take incentives or can't understand simple logic."

The boy's blue eyes widened considerably at the man's invective, and Sirius expelled a long breath through his straight nose.

"Pass me to Prongslet."

Neville nodded and Dahlia accepted the mirror.

"One of these days, we'll talk on this thing and it won't be because you're upset," he sighed with a tired, crooked smile. "Sorry I missed you yesterday. Dan told me you you called."

"That's all right," she said shakily. "I ought to have known you'd be pissed."

Sirius winced at the resignation in her voice.

"No, love. You really shouldn't have," he countered ruefully. "I'm too old to be doing that, especially with you and Nev counting on me. Trust me, Saf gave me a Lily-worthy scolding."

Dahlia huffed an almost-laugh.

"You're only thirty-one."

"Stop reminding me," he complained. "Anyway, I'm working on it. Don't worry. We won't let them take you and Hermione away from the Grangers."

She nodded stiffly.

"No, Dahlia. Look at me," he gently commanded.

The girl reluctantly met his gaze.

"I promise you, sweetheart, I'm never letting anything take you away from your family, again," her godfather said with conviction. "If the worst comes and these idiots are too stupid to see reason, we'll just have Albus send you and 'Mione home. We/ll relocate to Australia or something, and say 'piss off' to the lot of them."

Dahlia nodded again.

"Neville, hug your sister," Sirius called a little louder.

The boy complied, wrapping a clumsy arm around her shoulders. He slowly felt her relax against his side. Her godfather gave him a look that very firmly said _take care of her_ , told them to go do something fun and try to forget about the messy grown-up stuff, and disconnected to resume politicking. The Gryffindors remained like that long after the little glass surface went back to reflecting the room like a normal mirror, neither moving until the clock tower tolled the hour and they reluctantly left their temporary refuge to make their way as quickly as they could to the East Wing.

* * *

Professor Quirrell, Professor Flitwick, and Hermione all looked up the moment the door swung open to admit their missing members. The Slytherine stood, fully intending to chide them for their tardiness, but Neville's frantic headshake brought her up short.

" _There_ you are," their charms instructor said cheerily. "We wondered where you'd wandered off to. Is-"

He frowned and surveyed the two Lions critically, noting the slump of Dahlia's shoulders and Neville's twitchiness.

"Is everything quite all right, Miss Potter? Mr Longbottom?"

The young wizard made a jerky sort of gesture and grimaced.

"The Children's Protection Act isn't what it was supposed to be," he murmured while Dahlia numbly plaited her tangled waves and took off her overrobe, despite her usual habit of leaving it on for these sessions.

She faced off against the targeting mannequins and started some light stretches.

"Oh?" Quirrell's thin eyebrows drew together.

"It proposes separating muggleborn kids from their parents the first time they do accidental magic," he revealed slowly, meeting Hermione's gaze.

To his surprise, her face went blank, while their teachers expressed variations of dismay.

"Erm- A bloke from Hufflepuff sort of came up to Dahlia blaming her for it - I guess somebody in his family must have been there when it was presented," he further elaborated. "Dahli didn't take it too well."

"Of course she wouldn't!" Hermione huffed, her features morphing from her somewhat dazed look into more familiar righteous indignation. "That disgusting, no good, lazy, ignorant, privileged crook ought to be sacked."

 _RRRVVVVBOOOOOM!_

Smoke erupted on the other side of the room as pieces of canvas, smouldering bits of sawdust, and wood splinters blasted the walls, and everyone jumped. Flitwick threw up a quick shield as a reflex and cast a charm to clear the smoke and dust, only to find Dahlia glaring at what used to be a mannequin. Its fellowes leaned away from the charred pedestal, all bearing scorch marks or boasting bits of shrapnel.

"He ought to just die."

Hermione frowned at the cold, clipped tone of her sister's voice, but Dahlia's hateful expression melted when she found their concerned gazes focused on her.

"Oh," she breathed, staring at her wand with a grimace. "I- I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that. I'm-"

She sighed and rubbed her temple.

"It's been a really, _really_ long day."

Professor Flitwick, ever eager to smooth ruffled feathers and bring a smile to his students' faces, chuckled softly.

"That's quite all right, dear girl. Why don't we just blow things up today? I imagine you might find it cathartic. Merlin knows I did, as a youth."

Quirrell chimed in easily.

"I haven't quite given up the habit," he admitted ruefully. "Anytime I have a bad day the first thing I do is go down to the elves and ask for all the crockery they'd like to retire, head down to the cliff and blast away."

The pale witch smiled weakly.

"Yeah, I think I would. Thank you, Professors."

After destroying all the mannequins and several dozen plates, bowls and ceramic bakeware generously donated by the castle's elves, Dahlia returned to the common room fully determined to spend the remainder of the weekend in bed except to attend practice Sunday morning. Her homework lay neatly organised in her notebook for next week, and a clean uniform waited folded over the back of her desk chair.

She said a dull goodnight to Neville before climbing the stairs, stripped off her uniform, grabbed her pyjamas, and headed to the bathrooms. Usually, she preferred a quick shower before returning to her room, a habit ingrained by years of sharing space at St Anthony's more than anything. That night, however, she picked one of the huge clawfoot tubs at the back of the room, drew the sumptuous scarlet drapes around it, and sank into the scaldingly hot water. The faintly blue-tinted bubbles swallowed her up eagerly, and she remained there long after the moon rose behind the frosted glass windows cut into the west-facing wall.

Her body slowly relaxed until she felt vaguely like gelatin and her limbs seemed heavy. Other girls began to intrude on her temporary escape, and she finally pulled herself out, rinsed, towelled off, brushed her teeth, and retreated to bed clad in her favourite tee and flannel pyjama bottoms.

"Oh," she paused before climbing in, her hand still gripping the drapes.

A fat, grey rat missing a toe on its left front paw stared beadily up at her from its perch on her pillow.

"I don't like rodents," she told it grumpily, lifting the entire pillow and lowering it to the floor. "You ought to go back to Ronald."

Scabbers, either uncomprehending or uncaring of her discomfort, remained there until she tilted the pillow sideways. Gravity helped him tumble a few inches to the floor, where it sat on its hind legs, nose twitching while it watched her. She climbed under her covers afterward but eyed her pillow reproachfully.

"I have no idea how he sleeps with that rat," she muttered, eventually stripping it of its pillowcase and tossing it in the general direction of the hamper before restoring the cushion to its usual place.

She laid down, turned on her side, and promptly fell asleep, unmindful of the creature climbing her bedding to sit observing her through the dark, while she slipped into fitful dreams.

* * *

Peter Pettigrew considered himself a survivor.

When He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named declared open war against the wizarding world with his army of death eaters, giants, vampires, inferi and werewolves, he watched. Unbeknownst to his fellowes in the Order, he accompanied them to battles in his rat form to observe while the inhibited, ruthless purists cut them down. He sneered from his humble clerk's office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement while the Ministry made weak attempts to fight them, and when Wizengamot refused to authorise lethal force for the Aurors, he sought out the Dark Lord.

It was only a matter of time until He took over, and Peter refused to die for a cause he only felt a little badly about. No one in his family could be counted among the undesirables as defined by the death eaters, and Lily, while kind, had always held him at arm's length.

Meeting the Dark Lord took all the courage he had, but he left His side (after enduring several hours under the cruciatus curse, off and on, along with brutally administered legilimency) went out to prove himself and earn the mark. It was a simple matter to accompany Marlene McKinnon home on the pretense of coming over to babysit. It had to be bloody. It was expected, but by then, he'd seen enough viscera to numb him to the smell and sight. With the a borrowed wand, he cursed her husband in the back after stunning Marlene. The children were a little harder, so he silenced them before applying the curse that killed them. He took a while longer with Marlene.

She had never liked him, and he remembered her laughing when he asked her out at Hogwarts.

No one suspected anything when he called the order to the flat. He'd wept along with Remus, who had well-liked by Marlene despite his affliction.

Then, on Hallowe'en of 1981, his world fell apart. He had been on his way to glory for his service - gold, power, all the women he wanted - when his master fell to Lily Potter's rage. He'd taken his master's wand on a whim, hiding it away before allowing Black's hunting party to catch up with him. He stole one of the luck potions from Lucius Malfoy's private stores while the man was away at the Wizengamot, handing out galleons like candy in his efforts to avoid Azkaban, and under its influence, went to London, cut off his finger, and faked his death.

The next several months were spent living off filth while he made his way to Fabian and Gideon's sister's home. A quick dip in the pond on their property cleansed the worst from his matted fur, and little Percy took him in without a second glance. It had been worth it, he thought.

His gamble hadn't paid out, but he'd escaped capture and elevated his circumstances until table scraps comprised the majority of his meals - much better than refuse. He'd lived despite the Dark Lord and his former friends' best efforts. He might have had to spend his time as a rat, but he was comfortable and warm, well-loved by the humans who adopted him. Everyone had always underestimated him. Poor, clumsy Peter: too slow to keep up with James, Sirius and Remus without their constant help, too plump and ugly to attract a witch worth marrying, too timid to join in with the Order's frontline efforts.

In his humble opinion, he'd surpassed all their expectations, but as the months stretched into years, he began to realize something had gone horribly wrong somewhere in his carefully planned and executed escape. Slowly but surely, he felt himself deteriorating. He could no longer transform back to his human self. He'd tried many, many times, but everything failed. Terrible pain accompanied his movement if he tried to walk for more than a few minutes, worsening with every year, while his sleep became plagued by fractured nightmares and half-recalled memories.

It wasn't until he met Dahlia Potter that he remembered the oaths he'd made and broken on his way to personal advancement. Pain lanced his brain anytime he looked at her, and yet, the more he watched her, the more he recognised something _else_ accompanying that sharp agony. He first noticed it the night she punched Ron, disturbing him from his sleep. The strangely familiar sensation pulled at his magic before fading again to a subtle buzz against his whiskers. Then, for a brief moment on November 1st, he'd felt again. At the time, he hadn't the foggiest idea where she was, but it called to him.

So when the girl returned to the common room for bed, he followed. He remained when she pushed him off her pillow, and he achingly climbed her bedding to sit on her chest. It hurt, of course. Anytime he saw her, he felt the chains of Lily's oath tug him a little closer to hell, but at the same time, the sweetly familiar _something_ about the child soothed him just enough to make it bearable.

Beyond the borders of the velvet drapes encasing her bed, Pettigrew heard her dormmates go to bed and their soft breaths and snores fill the air.

That Lavender girl, in his opinion, could nearly match his Weasley boy for her volume.

He noticed Dahlia's eyelids twitching soon thereafter, and as the clock struck midnight, they snapped open.

The rat stood very still, but she merely stared forward, unseeing, her emerald irises almost glowing in the dark, until her head turned and her gaze fixed on him.

A ring of scarlet encircled her pupils.

Pleasure unlike anything he'd experienced since his Marking suffused his flesh, bleeding into his limbs until he rolled from the bed, gasping and squealing, to the floor. His body shuddered, and his bones creaked, but when it stopped, he lay on his back as a man for the first time in years.

 _Wormtail._

The voice spoke to him in his head, and he folded himself over out of habit, bowing toward the burgundy-draped four-poster.

 _You are dying, Wormtail. You'll be no better than a squib before long, and then she'll take you to your grave. Isn't that right, my faithful servant?_

"Yes, Master," he whispered scratchily, his voice a bare rasp from eleven years' disuse.

He wanted to weep. His Master survived, though he didn't understand how he'd hidden himself away. For the first time in ages, he allowed himself to feel a spark of hope.

 _That's right, dear Peter. I will be your salvation, but first, there is something we must acquire._

"Anything, my Lord," he murmured.

Anything to keep his life, and more to keep his magic. He was a survivor, after all.

* * *

Severus Snape woke with a start. Cold sweat clung to his forehead and chest, making his nightshirt cling to his skin in the chilled air of his bedroom. With trembling hands he undid the buttons holding the flannel cuff of his left sleeve and shoved the fabric out of the way until it scrunched at the crook of his elbow.

He slid his wand from under his pillow, wincing slightly when his silently cast spell lit its tip with soft yellow light, and uttered a curse at the angry red mark interrupting the pale skin of his forearm. He pushed away his covers and shoved his feet into his slippers, not bothering to grab his dressing gown before throwing a handful of sparkling powder into his fireplace.

"Headmaster's Office."

With a sickening whorl, the floo sucked him up and away, spinning him until light pierced the blur of shadows. He moved as if to take a step and emerged in the quiet, circular room.

"Severus?"

Dumbledore paused mid-stride before the windowed alcove behind his desk. The tassel hanging from his pointed sleeping cap swung as he observed his potions master's pallid face.

"What's happened?"

Snape lifted his left arm, still bare from the elbow down, and the headmaster rushed forward with far more agility than one might expect from a man his age.

"Oh dear," he breathed as he cast spell after spell, analysing the foul taint suffusing the enflamed flesh. "When?"

"Just a moment ago," the younger wizard tersely replied. "Albus, I can feel him."

The aged sorcerer leaned away and scrubbed a hand over his long, silver beard.

"But how? We saw the body for ourselves. Lily's work-" he paused, and his wispy eyebrows furrowed. "We must away to Godric's Hollow, posthaste."

A sour expression overtook the professor's face.

"My apologies, Severus," Dumbledore added softly. "I know you would rather not tread there, but-"

Snape sneered.

"Save your sympathy for one who deserves it. I'll dress and meet you."

With that, he turned on his heel, threw some more powder into the glowing fireplace, and disappeared in a burst of emerald flames.

* * *

Author's Notes

I've been trying to set this up for a while, now. Please let me know what you think if you've got a moment. Thanks everyone who reviewed, faved or followed. I'm making an effort to go through everyone who signed in (and has PM enabled) to respond, so please do keep the feedback coming!


	16. Seeking

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Sixteen: Seeking

* * *

Swaths of muted green and blue shimmered through a barrier of thick glass, undulating lazily to the movements of indiscernible aquatic creatures while they went about their mornings. While Hermione watched, a bit of moisture condensed and dripped from the ceiling, only to disappear before it could make contact with anything below. The subtle example of magic filled her with the same wonder and frustration she'd become accustomed to since entering the wizarding world. Such a thing was probably taken for granted by the non muggle-raised kids, but to her, all these things used to improve quality of life left her in awe.

The applications she could think of for the things she'd learned and witnessed filled more than one of her journals.

Her wistful thoughts turned sour as Fudge's bill inserted itself at the forefront of her mind. Hermione had gone back to her room as soon as she could excuse herself from dinner, called Sirius, and had a copy before bedtime. A few careful studies of its language, and she had it memorised, permanently imprinted in her mind. The idea they proposed infuriated and frightened her in equal measures.

If the Act succeeded, she and her sister faced the choice between their magic and leaving Britain. She loved her family. She would never allow their obliviation, but she could not imagine a life without the gift she'd been given. Hermione just couldn't comprehend how anyone with any sentiment for equality viewed the proposal favorably. A more pragmatic part of her countered that while rumour would spread throughout Hogwarts like brushfire, making its way home to parents, the document itself likely would not be publicised. Based on what she'd witnessed, read about, and understood not only of Wizengamot, but the muggle government, demographic-marginalising policies generally garnered little to no concern by those outside of the affected group. The parents who would be in-the-know were those less likely to have a voice in the political process. She doubted the half-blood population would seek out the primary document or include the salient details in letters home to their mums and dads. The sympathetic would mention it at least in passing (she hoped), but what motivation did all-muggle families have to rally around a cause unrelated to their rights?

Hermione sighed. The entire thing made her head hurt. The stress made her antsy. She finally decided to brave the cold floor, swung her legs off the side of her bed, and began dressing for the day.

Saturdays normally heralded exploration and fun with Dahlia and Neville, but that morning, she doubted her sister would want to do anything at all, if she had even woken. Although the girl hadn't admitted as much, Hermione could tell from the shadows darkening her eyes she hadn't been sleeping well. Still, it wouldn't do to make Dahlia wait if she assumed wrongly.

She winced a little as the elastic waistband of her thick cotton stockings bit into her belly. The insistent throb radiating from her abdomen to her lower back twinged for a moment before dulling again, and she resolved to stop by the infirmary for a pain potion on the way.

While she fully credited muggle medicine for its advances and superior research, she couldn't deny magical remedies tended to work faster with fewer side-effects.

"Good morning, Granger," Daphne called to her sleepily.

Hermione coaxed her unruly curls from the back of her cable-knit jumper and smiled wanly.

"Good morning," she answered. "Any plans today?"

The willowy blonde hummed noncommittally.

"Not aside from writing my parents," she replied, running a brush through her silken hair.

The muggleborn idly wondered if Daphne's parents might be willing to speak up. The Greengrass family, while not as old as Sirius' house, held a seat in the wizengamot and heavily influenced the moderate bloc of the governing body, from what he'd told her in their terse mirror-call.

"I need to work on my reaction table for Professor Snape, too, so I suppose I'll end up in the library at some point. You?"

Hermione finished wrapping an elastic around the end of a long, thick plait and shrugged.

"Honestly, I'm not sure. It depends on Dahlia."

Daphne started dressing and threw her dormmate a concerned glance.

"Is there a particular reason she didn't show up for dinner?"

"No," Hermione agreed with a sigh. "I suppose I may as well tell you. Someone-"

Her nose wrinkled with displeasure at the thought of the boy's unfair accusations, as described by Neville.

"-confronted her in the corridors before we met up, accusing her of plotting against muggleborns," she continued. "Fudge's Protection Act isn't as advertised. Basically it will likely stop most muggleborns from coming to Hogwarts, because no sensible parent is going to allow their children to be taken from them, which is the cost for keeping and learning about magic. I've got a copy if you're interested. "

"I see," the blonde's lips pursed. "They've tried it before. Not Fudge, but some others during the war. They never got very far, before, but the Potter name has been attached to it for ages, now, and most people think your sister's Morgana or Nimue come again. It depends on who you ask, of course."

Hermione blinked.

"Wait, what?"

Daphne raised a sculpted eyebrow, her blue eyes flashing with surprise.

"You didn't think people haven't been talking, did you?" she snorted, managing to make the rude noise sound almost delicate. "Despite the vast difference between your mind and the rest of the rabble, I'm sure our year-mates seem slow, but even they've figured out by now you're both leagues ahead in power, skill and knowledge. For the last month, every tiny verbal and written observation we and the professors have made has been repeated and exaggerated by thousands. With what happened in the summer, well-"

She waved her hand dismissively.

"I think it's all asinine, of course, but a lot of dull witches and wizards are disinclined to believe you played any sort of role outside of 'damsel' in Dahlia's harrowing adventure," the taller girl continued. "I think I've read a headline to that effect in _Witch Weakly_ , actually."

The girl went to her desk and after a little shuffling, pulled out a glossy magazine. Sure enough, the top left edge of the centerfold read:

 _Heroine Dahlia Potter: Knight and Advocate for Muggleborns_

Hermione scowled as she scanned through the article. After memorising what details she wanted, she silently handed Daphne a roll of parchment she'd disguised amidst a neatly tied bundle of ready-to-turn-in homework assignments in her escritoire.

"There's a passphrase," she clarified at her friend's confused gaze. "Tap it three times and say 'Moony's furry bum'."

"Seriously?" the pureblood giggled.

Hermione sighed.

"Sirius' attempt at making me laugh before I digested that idiocy first-hand."

She turned back to readying herself for the day to allow Daphne time to read, her own thoughts reeling. They had to _do_ something. If Sirius wasn't having any luck, then there had to be something else, another way to educate those who would see it for the madness it was without the Ministry or the _Prophet'_ s filter.

"Well, that's certainly quite the bit of legislation," Daphne finally hummed, passing it back. "I would almost say it were clever, but it goes against my sensibilities to compliment either Fudge or his undersecretary. They always seek us out at the Ministry's Yule Ball, and it's never been pleasant. Have you warned Potter? I'm certain they're going to call it Dahlia Potter's Act in all the press. That boy won't be the only one to bother her."

"Yes, that's what I'm worried about, too," Hermione muttered, chewing her lower lip. "She's had a very difficult time, lately. Anyway, the average person doesn't bother reading those sorts of things in full before voting. I don't suppose you have any idea how the balance stands in the Wizengamot at the moment, would you?"

Her friend flicked her wand over her shoulder, and the row of eye-and-loop buttons running from the back of her collar to her hips fastened themselves. Hermione made a mental note to look up the charm. Perhaps there was something to make her daily battle against her hair go a little smoother. She usually liked her kinky curls, but an hour just to comb and plait it really felt excessive.

"Of course I do. There's only about a third with the motivation and intelligence to read the fine print. It's really quite the coup they're attempting. As of right now, the majority will likely vote thinking they're doing their due diligence, believing themselves wholly correct in their approval since Dahlia demanded action," she answered after a moment. "The repeated usage of words like 'choice' and 'protection' will reassure lazy legislators they can believe whatever rubbish the speaker will use on Fudge's behalf, nevermind the true context."

Hermione took a calming breath and tucked a rebellious curl behind her ear.

"Utterly ridiculous," she grumbled after pushing down her rising pique. "Does it ever bother you how idiotic some people are?"

Daphne laughed lightly.

"Oh, all the time," she said. "And a good portion of them decide what we can and can't do with our lives and magic. A sorry state of affairs, isn't it?"

"Do you think circulating copies through the school would help, at all?" Hermione frowned, re-applying the charm to disguise the text, changing it to look like a charms assignment.

"I wouldn't bother," Daphne said wryly. "Those with any sense will ask before harassing Potter, anyway, and everyone else will be too wrapped up in their forcefed opinions to recognise the truth if McGonagall read it aloud in the Great Hall."

Unfortunately, Hermione thought, her friend's prediction proved entirely too correct. A tense sort of atmosphere hovered over the student body as they walked into the Great Hall for breakfast. People whispered worriedly to one another, bending over copies of the _Prophet_ and letters from family or friends in London. The news had broken, and in the time between yesterday's dinner and then, they'd already polarised.

Malfoy, in particular, made a point of loudly proclaiming his support of the Bill, including some extremely condescending comments toward herself as she spread marmalade on her toast. Hermione ignored him. She had bigger worries.

Neville arrived at 8, but without Dahlia at his side, as was his habit.

"Parvati told me Dahli told her she's going to catch up on sleep," he said when Hermione she walked over to his table at the conclusion of her own meal. "She didn't look so great when we got back in. I think she might be coming down with something."

"It wouldn't surprise me," Hermione huffed. "Do you think you could take me up if she doesn't show for lunch?"

The boy glanced across the table at Percy Weasley, who sat carefully cutting his eggs and bacon into perfectly bite-sized pieces while pursuing his own copy of the newspaper.

"Yes. We should talk to the twins, though," he finally agreed in a murmur. "In case we need to sneak you in."

The slytherin spotted the redheads sitting a little further down the bench, both looking surprisingly serious compared to their usual expressions of mischief and mirth.

"Do you think they know how to get to the kitchens?" she mused. "I think we'd better put together a picnic. Even if Dahli wakes up, I don't think she'll want to come in here. She's stubborn enough to survive on horrible granola and water."

Neville's head bobbed eagerly.

"Yeah, they definitely do. I heard Ron say they're going to handle food for a celebration party if we win the match next Saturday."

Decided, the two settled in, Neville to finish his breakfast and Hermione to read while she waited, after which they approached the Weasley twins. The boys readily agreed to find them at 11:30 with assurances they could indeed locate them wherever they were.

Hermione regarded their confidence with suspicion. It had taken weeks for her to navigate the castle just to find a room, let alone a person. She couldn't imagine how they could achieve such a feat without using illicit means.

In the meantime, the Slytherin retreated to the library to find herself a book detailing Wizengamot processes. Madam Pince glared at her distrustfully while stamping the check-out slip, but she left with her bag weighing much heavier against her hip before heading to the door.

The castle felt too oppressive at the moment, so, with a jar of bluebell flames in hand, she bundled up, started down the lane toward the lake, and arrived at her chosen getaway ten minutes later. Beyond the treeline, a few dozen metres from the lake's southernmost edge, lay a shelf of boulders dotted with soft moss and lichen perfect for outdoor lazing. Hermione left the path to climb up and cast a few heating and dehumidifying charms on the damp stone. It took several applications, but soon, a dry patch large enough for her to stretch out and lay on her stomach interrupted the darker granite around her. She tugged an afghan from her bag, spreading it over the stone, and finally situated herself on the cushy blanket with the bluebell flames at her side, one half of the throw pulled around her to keep the heat in.

"Hello, there!"

Hermione barely bit back an _eep!_ of surprise at the booming voice and sat up to find the castle's groundskeeper grinning at her, kind, beetle-black eyes glinting, as he led a skeletal, winged, black creature not unlike a horse down the path.

"Good morning," she finally said. "It's Mr Hagrid, isn't it?"

The enormous man chuckled, and his black beard bristled with mirth.

"Jus' Hagrid," he corrected with a grin, taking a few strides closer with the animal in his wake. "What're you up ter on a cold day like this?"

The girl watched the thing behind him warily. It seemed docile enough in his care, but the thin, bat-like wings and glowing red eyes gave her shivers.

"Just reading," Hermione answered, holding up her book. "And these help with the cold."

She gestured at the bluebell flames, and Hagrid sighed wistfully.

"Can no' do much magic, myself," he admitted, patting the beast beside him absently. "I was expelled as a kid, but Professor Dumbledore was kind enough ter convince the headmaster a' the time to keep me on as a groundskeeper. M'da was sick, you see, couldn' look after me. Good man, Dumbledore."

"I'm sorry," the Slytherin said, unsure what else might be acceptable and feeling awkward for it. "Might I ask what that is?"

Hagrid grinned and stepped slightly to the side to give her a better view of the animal.

"This here's Rupert," he said proudly. "One of the thestral herd. They pull the carriages fer upper-years. Sweet things, thestrals, even if they look a sight."

As he spoke, the man pulled a parcel from a pocket in his leather duster and unwrapped it to reveal some cubed meat. While she watched, he offered a piece to the beast, and it delicately plucked the morsel from his grip with long, fang-like teeth. She barely suppressed a shudder despite her fascination.

"Scavengers, kind of like a vulture," he further explained. "Good boy, Rupert. Want ter pet 'im?"

"Oh, um-" she closed her book and stood to climb down from her boulder.

The thestral stretched its neck, trying to reach more food while she made her way down. It focused one of its bright red eyes on her, and with the groundskeeper's encouragement, she raised her hand to its muzzle. It sniffed her, and up close, she realised it more closely resembled a dragon than a horse. It had scales and leathery skin, rather than fur. The beast butted her palm, and she smiled nervously.

"What do the thestrals do the rest of the year, if they only pull carriages before and after term?" she asked curiously, accepting the parcel of meat.

She tried to ignore the clammy feeling of the raw beef between her fingers, but slowly relaxed as she scratched behind one of the horn-like protrusions at the back of Rupert's head. He seemed to like it well enough.

"Follow me around, lookin' fer nibbles, mostly," the groundskeeper chuckled. "They clean up the Forest, too. Eatin' dead things before they can start ter rot. You know, thestral stuff."

The little witch made a sound of understanding and giggled as Rupert nuzzled her cheek. Though she had imagined it to be cold, its face felt warm to the touch. She stroked it absently, feeding it until only the butcher paper remained of the groundskeeper's snack supply. After a while, Hagrid took a fob watch from his pocket, and Hermione frowned.

"I'm sorry, you're probably terribly busy," she apologised. "Were you on your way to do something? I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Jus' headed inter the forest," he offered with a shrug. "Goin' ter get Fluffy fer Professor Dumbledore."

"What's a Fluffy?"

The confidence and pride with which he'd delivered his last words evaporated, and Hagrid began avoiding Hermione's gaze.

"Er- Never you mind that," he chuckled nervously. "Well, I'd better get on with things. Good ter meet ya!"

He made a hasty retreat, and the thestral, seemingly realising he wasn't getting any more snacks, nuzzled Hermione's head one last time before disappearing into the trees. The witch returned to her boulder and book feeling curious, but too preoccupied with other worries to pursue the issue at the moment. Still, meeting the intimidating groundskeeper had been a pleasant, unexpected addition to her day, and she decided to introduce Dahlia and Neville to him properly if they ever came across one another, again.

He seemed as sweet as the animals he cared for, and it never hurt to have such someone intimately acquainted with the area and its animal denizens as a friend.

…

She dreamed in shades of green and deep, bruised purple. Sound and smell floated to her, becoming warped impressions against her senses. Emotion, however, registered all too sharply.

Fear, icy in her belly and hot on her brow, seized her muscles and made her gasp for air. Pain burned at her chest, and something hot, wet and sticky made tacky trails from her nose and ears. She raised her hands and shrieked as the flesh flaked away, revealing a mess of scarlet and white underneath. She couldn't understand. It shouldn't have been possible. She couldn't remember why it shouldn't have been possible. Everything went black, and then she was falling, still burning, still writhing in pain.

Dahlia screamed and bolted upright only to feel her head smack against something hard.

"Ow!"

She groped at her bedside table until she found her glasses and groaned as she rubbed the aching spot on her forehead. The unfortunate girl who'd woken her mimicked Dahlia's expression and movements exactly.

"Sorry," Katie finally managed. "You looked like you were having a nightmare."

"Ugh," the first-year complained as she slid from the bed. "You've got a skull like a bludger."

"So do you," the brunette countered with a smile, dropping to a whisper. "I think it's a prerequisite for playing."

Dahlia would have laughed if she didn't have a pounding headache. Instead, she got out of bed and began to dress in her jeans and a hooded, zip-up jumper over a graphic tee.

"Anyway, Neville's looking for you," Katie revealed. "He's in the common room. Do you want me to tell him to leave you be? You look a bit peaky"

"No, thank you," the younger witch grimaced. "I'll be fine. Erm-"

She blushed a little.

"I really appreciate you waking me. I really was having a horrible dream."

Katie beamed at her.

"Of course! What're friends for? I'll see you later?"

"Sure."

Dahlia departed the dormitory shortly thereafter for the common room. She barely left the bottom step before a pair of familiar arms wrapped tightly around her, and bushy brown hair obscured her vision.

"Hermione?"

Her sister grinned as she pulled away.

"The twins and Neville brought me up," she said by way of explanation, completely ignoring a few grumpy looks sent her way by the common room's occupants. "I thought you might want to give the Great Hall a miss, so we brought a picnic."

Neville held up a heavily laden basket, and Dahlia felt like she might kiss them.

"Thank you," she said emphatically, giving her sister another hug. "I don't know if I can handle much today, honestly. I'm knackered, not to mention starving."

Hermione's sympathetic smile soothed the last of the tension lingering from her nightmare, and she gladly followed the Slytherin and her godbrother through the short arch and past the portrait after throwing the twins a grateful wave. They winked in tandem, and she began to feel hopeful the day might not be as awful as its predecessor.

Brunch consisted of Dahlia's favourite foods, none of which usually appeared in the Great Hall at mealtimes.

"Elves," Neville explained when she asked. "Hermione told them why we wanted it, and they sort of interrogated us until they had a full list."

The Slytherin herself made a strange expression, but waved away Dahlia's curious glance.

"I don't know, yet," she huffed. "I need to do a bit more research before I draw a conclusion."

 _More than a little more research,_ Hermione thought to herself.

It had taken all of her considerable self-control to rein in her indignance at learning the castle essentially operated due in great part to the efforts of an unpaid, unacknowledged work force. Everything in her screamed _slavery_ , but Neville had yanked her away in a show of force so alien to his normal behaviour, she stalled the infuriated invective on the tip of her tongue.

"Please don't offend them," he'd whispered urgently, ignoring the twins' bemused expressions. "It's complicated, but the Hogwarts elves are here because they want to be."

His rushed, plaintive request was delivered with such sincerity, she reluctantly agreed to suspend judgement and settled in to watch while things flew through the air. Whereas most of the food preparation she'd witnessed involved lots of bowls, chopping boards, and related accoutrements, the elves' magic worked in a dance of floating, twirling, baking conducted mid-air, each ingredient combining and cooking at magical speed until the little beings had assembled a truly magnificent picnic of pasties, rosemary shortbread, tea, curried lamb, naan, and a large pitcher of chilled water.

Between thee surprise picnic and their light chatter, Hermione and Neville managed to raise Dahlia's spirits until she agreed to leave the castle with them, if only to go flying while they watched and played wizard's chess, which Neville had borrowed from Seamus. Dahlia led the trio about the castle via its secret passageways, and thankfully, the remainder of their weekend passed without incident.

Monday, however, bore its own surprises.

"Good morning," Professor Dumbledore called when the Hall reached peak breakfasting capacity. "I have some exciting news to share with you all this morning. The third floor corridor in the East Wing will be undergoing renovation thanks in part to a generous donor. After a lot of consideration, and in partnership with several Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley proprietors, the Wing will feature a gymnasium and swimming pool designed for open student use, a several conference rooms to better facilitate club meetings, and open student lounges to encourage inter-house community."

Excited whispers broke out through the Hall, and Dahlia perked up a little from her previously hunched pose over her toast.

"During construction, the corridor shall henceforth be considered out-of-bounds. I have been informed to warn you an extremely tenacious guardian has been tasked with enforcing this rule, so all students not wishing to suffer an extremely painful death are advised to keep well away. Thank you."

He cast his piercing gaze around, lingering on the Weasley twins before stepping away from the podium. The low hum of conversation quickly built to excitable chatter, and Dahlia felt relieved it didn't involve her or Fudge's disaster of a bill - something she'd been unable to completely escape since Friday. She even felt comfortable enough to sit after she finished eating to read the _Prophet_ and rather enjoyed the front page article, which featured an attempted Gringotts robbery. The goblins' quotes were especially entertaining. Their agreement with the ministry apparently allowed them to deal with thieves in their own way, and they weren't shy about describing the prescribed consequences for thievery, successful or otherwise. Vindictively, she imagined them throwing Fudge in a pit with a dragon. The daydream improved her mood a bit, especially after she added deadly acid and idiot-seeking missiles to the imagined punishment.

Unfortunately for her, the reprieve was short-lived.

The next several weeks became an exercise in endurance for the first-year Gryffindor as outside Hogwarts' walls, the wizarding world debated what the _Prophet_ named the most significant legislation since the end of the war. Sirius did his best to keep her informed and bolster her spirits, but she felt like she could barely hold it together. Where before she found herself the unwilling recipient of hero-worship, she became accustomed to scathing remarks and accusatory glares.

Per Safiya's request, she continued journalling. The venting didn't make her situation any better, but it kept her from drowning in the misery of weathering the castle's suddenly volatile atmosphere.

.

 _6 November 1991_

 _A senior Ravenclaw I've never met before came up to me between classes to let me know he sympathised with what I'm going through. He said things would blow over and that people would realise the bill was in everyone's best interests. He wanted me to know I had his support._

 _I couldn't think of anything clever to say. I told him, I hated it, and it was enormously awkward. Then he sort of did this condescending thing where he told me I'd come to appreciate what others were doing on my behalf when I got older. Thank God for Neville. He's become rather used to telling people to piss off._

 _I just want to hex everything._

 _Hermione says a lot of people are too privileged to understand the benefits granted them by their status, whether it's socioeconomic, blood-based, or racial. I just don't understand how anyone can condone taking someone's kids away, let alone their memories. I know the law says it's necessary in some instances, like if muggles see a dragon or something, but I don't get it._

 _It's like wizards think everyone else are a subspecies too dumb to understand the importance of peace and the beauty in the existence of magic - that we'll have witch hunts again._

 _I don't know how it is in other countries, but I want to believe that if the Queen knew wizards existed and made up a part of her citizenry, she'd act to protect them just like any other minority._

 _It's like some mad bipolar logic: on the one hand, muggles are scary because they've got bombs and numbers, on the other, they're too stupid to really bother with._

 _I just want this all to go away. I can't even take it out on the dummies, anymore, because our room was in the East Wing, and I guess between classes and the renovation, apparently Professor Flitwick and Professor Quirrell are short of time. Professor Flitwick says he's going to try and get the duelling club started again, but he hasn't mentioned anything, yet. Hermione still duells me on the grounds, and we're helping Neville to catch up with his casting, but it's not the same._

 _._

 _9 November 1991_

 _I haven't seen any mention of pursuing the people who paid Scabior's incentives in the_ _Prophet_ _. Sirius is pretty sure whoever they are must be members of Voldemort's old crowd, but the ones still out of Azkaban are all disgustingly rich, so they likely paid everyone off to sweep their involvement under the rug._

 _I don't think there are any checks and balances that actually work in the wizarding world. I don't think the average wizard votes for anything aside from the minister._

 _How can they cite Her Majesty in their bills if they don't go by her laws? None if it makes sense._

 _I've been flying a lot at night. Hedwig joins me sometimes. She seems to understand a lot more than most post owls, even. It's the only time I feel anything close to normal, anymore._

 _._

 _12 November 1991_

 _Not sleeping much, lately. Sometimes I look up and realise I've been wandering around for ages, and it's well past curfew. It's a miracle I haven't been caught by Filch or Mrs Norris._

 _I love cats, but she's picked a terrible human. He advocates hanging people from their ankles and whipping them. I wonder if anyone's ever done that to him. People who say and do that sort of thing's all right deserve that and worse._

 _15 November 1991_

 _I realised today we didn't acknowledge Neville's parents on the 2nd. I tried to apologise when I remembered, but he brushed it off. He's too nice to say it bothered him._

 _What sort of person am I? I know how horrible that feels. He spent the whole day running interference between me and the rest of Gryffindor. I need to find a way to make it up to him._

 _Outside the common room, it's like everyone with any muggle connections at all are angry with me, or at least most of them. Susan Bones made a point of telling me she knew I wasn't behind that nonsense, as did Dean Thomas, of all people. He seems an all right sort. The rest of Gryffindor aren't belligerent, for the most part, but I'm so sick of fielding questions I don't have answers to._

 _People have started picking on Neville for defending me, too. He came back one night silenced and in a leg-locker. I've no idea how he managed all those stairs. How can he and Hermione put up with me? I feel like I've only brought them trouble all year._

 _I'm still having terrible nightmares, too. Lily Moon's been giving me dirty looks for waking everyone up. I told Professor Quirrell I store, and he helped me learn a silencing charm for my curtains after class. I guess I'm no good at lying, though. He sent me to Madam Pomfrey for a dreamless sleep potion._

 _Pomfrey didn't ask questions. I love that about her, but she says I can't have it except a couple times a week. I need to write Safiya for more tablets._

 _._

 _16 November 1991_

 _Hermione's worried. I think 'I'm fine' is becoming our code for really, really horrible. I wish she'd just let it drop. She doesn't smile very much anymore. I hate it. I hate Fudge and that Umbridge person. I hate that I can't do anything._

 _I suggested to Sirius we could hold another press conference, but he said at this point, it's likely to do more harm than good. He promised I can speak at the final vote, though, in May. That feels like ages from now, though._

 _I just wish I had the power to change things. I wish I could wipe that smug smile off Fudge's stupid face. I don't know how that pompous git sleeps at night when his proposal would ruin thousands of lives. People like him don't deserve what they've got. I'd take everything he loves and enjoys away from him, if I could. Maybe then he'd understand what it feels like._

 _._

 _19 November 1991_

 _I keep dreaming about a red stone and a man with a pointy face. He looks like he ought to be hospitalised. His skin's all grey, and he's always really sweaty. At the very least, he ought to be submitted to a good dentist. His teeth are all overgrown and yellow. He makes my skin crawl._

 _I read once about lucid dreaming. I think I'm going to make a trip to the library with Hermione at Hols and get a book about it. If I can figure it out, I want to insert Saf and Dan in the dream and unleash their arsenal of dental tools on him. I don't think anyone can be scary after watching them blubber in a dentist's chair._

 _._

 _20 November 1991_

 _I've got 60 some hours left before the game, and Wood's officially lost his mind. We spent a good 4 hours flying last night in the wind and rain. Hermione showed me an anti-fog and a water-repelling spell for my goggles, but we haven't figured anything out to help keep me dry. Fred and George got everyone pepper-up potions for after to keep us from becoming ill, and it made me steam at the ears for hours. I'm glad I don't have red hair like my mother did. The twins looked like someone lit them on fire from a distance. It was a bit disturbing._

 _I'm actually really glad that Wood's kept me a secret from everyone except the team. Things are bad enough, as is. A fight broke out yesterday in the corridors half about quidditch and half about the Act. I wasn't there, but fifteen other kids got detention with Filch, Neville and Ronald included._

 _I still don't like him, or his brother Percy, much, but Neville says Ron agrees what Fudge's trying to do is really messed up, at least, so he's not a complete wanker. I just hope I survive Saturday to see how everything turns out. Apparently the risk of being struck by lightning isn't grounds for postponing a game. I'm never telling Saf. I hope Sirius doesn't decide to bring her. It's bad enough with Hermione telling me off for 'aerial acrobatics'._

 _As soon as this weekend's over, I'm going to call in a Fred and George Special for Malfoy. Neville finally admitted he's the one that been hexing him off and on, but he always manages to do it when he's got friends, and Neville's on his own. Malfoy baffles me. I've watched in potions. He's not actually an idiot. He knows his academic stuff, but I think he has the common sense of a stump. Maybe no one's ever told him 'no,' before._

 _I can't wait for Hols. I'm so tired._

* * *

November 23rd dawned bright and cold, just as every morning had for the past several weeks. The lake looked steel grey through the glass ceilings and windows of the Slytherin common room and dormitories, and the castle never felt more foreboding. The Professors had made a habit of standing in the corridors between classes to prevent fights breaking out about the Bill or Quidditch and to disperse them up when they inevitably happened. The previously unfriendly relationship between Hermione's house and her sister's had escalated to violent rivalry, especially among the boys.

Hermione herself couldn't really understand it. Her house supposedly represented clever, driven people, and yet she was forced to admit they started things just as often as the Gryffindors. Daphne and Tracey shared her disapproval of their immaturity, but displayed it with rather more grace than she thought she possessed. She found it difficult to remain cool in the face of pure idiocy. Fortunately, however, her multiple displays of capability and her relationship with Sirius had put most of her house off bothering her about her affiliation with Gryffindor. She very comfortably continued her library sessions with the girls, Dahlia, and Neville, though increasingly, her sister begged off either to catch up on sleep or attend one of Oliver Wood's spontaneous practices.

She rather wanted to hex that boy. Hermione hoped the match itself would at least alleviate some of the tension gripping the school, seeing as her sister had nearly died for the stupid pastime more than once over the course of the month.

Although most Saturday mornings tended to pass lazily for most students, her dormitory buzzed with activity that day. Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode woke shortly after her and began decking themselves out in silver and green while Hermione layered on stockings, jeans, leg warmers, shirt, jumper, and a cleverly charmed jersey Sirius had sent her as a surprise for Dahlia. With her dad's assistance, he'd designed the deep green and silver garment to display EVANS-POTTER across the back in bold, gothic burgundy lined in gold when she cast a revealing spell at it. The letter accompanying the gift also described a second version solely in Gryffindor's colours, which Remus explained he and Sirius would also wear.

Sirius had followed the neat scrawl with his own carelessly elegant script informing Hermione her mother had forced him to accept a scarf in Slytherin's colours. She grinned to imagine her mum compelling the wizard into doing her bidding. Sirius Black possessed enough stubbornness to move mountains, if so inclined, but he'd yet to succeed in wheedling out of Safiya Grangers' politely worded requests.

Apparently, her drills scared him.

Hermione arrived in the Great Hall to find Dahlia already seated at her table between Daphne and Tracey, who both threw one another sly glances whenever their dormmate's sister took tentative sips at her tea.

"Good morning," she greeted, sliding into the space they made for her.

Her fellow Slytherins replied cheerfully, but Dahlia made something between a groan and a squeak.

"Are you all right?" she asked after spreading her serviette over her lap, leaning close so the others couldn't hear. "You look peaky."

"I couldn't sleep last night, so I stayed up reading _Quidditch Through the Ages_ ," she muttered, clutching her delicate teacup like it might be the only thing keeping her together. "Baaaaad idea. Did you know Seekers receive eighty percent of all serious injuries reported to the Department of Magical Games and Sports?"

Hermione barely suppressed a groan. She had forgotten about the book she'd found by chance while looking for something else. Like any book she touched, she read through it before passing it on, and her mind easily recalled the statistics to which Dahlia referred.

In addition to receiving the most grievous and frequent injuries, Seekers also fell victim to fouls more often than any other position. The book described these instances in detail, but with a tilt toward humour, which she thought would have entertained Dahlia when she originally plucked the leather-bound volume from its shelf. The accompanying photographs, however, probably undid any levity injected by the author's voice.

"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Tracey asked lightly, eyeing the Gryffindor's empty plate. "Quidditch, today. You'll need your strength."

Hermione barely managed to keep her face neutral. She doubted anyone else from her house (excluding Daphne, of course) had guessed at the reason for her sister's obvious nerves.

"What for? Worried she'll faint during the climb?" snorted Blaise Zabini, a tall boy across the table from them. "Or perhaps you're afraid the sport's too intense for such a delicate flower."

Dahlia grimaced but didn't offer a rejoinder.

"You're one to talk," Hermione teased with a small smile, pulling the attention away from her.

She rarely ever joined in the banter exchanged over meals, preferring to leave such things to Daphne, who alway had a witty remark.

"Or am I wrong in remembering you screaming for rescue in Herbology Tuesday last?"

The boy grinned broadly, focusing his slanted gaze on her. His full mouth curved wickedly.

"How would you react to a great bloody plant grabbing _your_ bits?" he laughed. "I couldn't help myself."

A couple months ago, she might have blushed, but Hermione only rolled her eyes.

" _I_ ' _d_ never fail to get free of one on my own, Mr Zabini," she countered. "What sort of wizard forgets _incendio_? Honestly, 'there's no wood'- That's something I'd expect of Crabbe."

He smirked appreciatively while her house mates erupted into guffaws despite themselves. Even Goyle snickered. Malfoy looked very much like he'd accidentally swallowed a bug in his efforts to ignore their mirth.

"Not half bad, Granger," Daphne murmured as she refilled her teacup. "You might just get the hang of things, after all."

Hermione laughed weakly.

Now, if she could just manage everything else, the rest might turn out all right. As it was, she worried she might not succeed in getting Dahlia down to the pitch.

.

Despite her sister's best attempts, Dahlia couldn't do more than swallow a few bites of dry toast with her ginger and lemon tea. She felt terrible.

She had found herself wandering again the previous night after she finally put down the book, and by the time she made it back to Gryffindor tower from the third floor corridor's shuttered entrance - where she imagined she'd wandered in want of the displaced duelling dummies - the night was half gone, already. In all, she spent only a couple of hours of sleeping, and it hadn't felt restful, at all.

Telling herself it would all go away when she got in the air, Dahlia made her way down to the pitch with the first wave of Gryffindor departees, plus Hermione. She and Neville waved goodbye to her just before the stands, where she split off to quietly follow Katie Bell to the girls' dressing rooms.

Dahlia stared at the burnished nameplate designating her locker and took several deep breaths. It helped enough that she could get its finicky handle to turn without a second attempt, but she still struggled a bit getting her weekend wear off.

"How are you feeling?" Katie asked, pulling a sports bra over her head. "Nervous?"

"Yeah, a bit," Dahlia mumbled as she slipped into the lycra joggers and long-sleeved undershirt Dan had sent her. "More than a bit."

The brunette made a sympathetic noise.

"Yeah, me too," she admitted. "It's my first real game. Wood held tryouts almost immediately after we lost the cup last spring."

"Really? I thought you must have been a reserve last year, or something," Dahlia marvelled, momentarily distracted. "You work so well with Angelina and Alicia."

"Oh, that's because we live fairly close to one another," Katie explained. "We had all summer to practice. They're still leagues ahead of me, though."

The first-year personally thought that a massively humble understatement. She had seen both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaws' practices now and then from the tower. The three girls moved like they had been flying together for since birth, predicting one another's reactions and positions even when random events - lightning, bludgers, the twins, random birds or post owls - interrupted their plays and ruined their formations.

She hoped she could play as well.

Without spectators, she had an almost perfect record catching the snitch, but she couldn't remember a time when she'd felt more nervous in her life. Katie fell silent, again, and Dahlia returned to pulling on her jodhpurs, soft-soled lace-up riding boots, scarlet robes. and leather armour. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and sighed. At least she looked the part.

Angelina and Alicia showed up shortly thereafter and changed much quicker as the clock ticked down toward noon. Dahlia barely managed to swallow down her butterflies when Wood summoned them all to the room Fred and George called the Debriefing Chamber.

"All right lads," he said, staring them all down.

"And lasses," Angelina Johnson cut in.

"And lasses," the captain amended with a small nod. "This is it."

"The big one," Fred quoted, mimicking the fifth year's wide stance.

"The one we've all been waiting for," George continued.

"We've got the whole thing memorised. He never changes it," Fred said to Dahlia in a stage whisper. "Ever."

"Oi, unless one or both of you wants the job, shut up."

The red-heads bowed gratuitously, and after sending them a pointed glare, Oliver went on.

"We've got the best damned team here, the best we've seen in years. We're going to win this; I know it."

His face eloquently communicated the unsaid _or else_. Outside, the noise of the crowd rose to a frenzy, and Dahlia realised a spell must have repressed it until the time came for their grand entry.

Dahlia queued up at Wood's gesture, the double doors painted with Gryffindors colours opened silently, and Lee Jordan's voice reached her over the roar of a thousand-plus voices.

Sirius hadn't exaggerated when he said _everyone_ with anyone at Hogwarts came out to the games.

"Keeper Oliver Wood, back again in his second year as Gryffindor's captain- Angelina Johnson, veteran chaser extraordinaire of unparallelled skill and beauty-"

"Jordan!"

Dahlia recognised Professor McGonagall's voice and breathed an anxious giggle.

"Right-o. Sorry Professor, I'll just get on with it then. Johnson's followed by chasers Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell."

They flew out on cue to run their warm-up lap. Dahlia's heart pounded violently against her ribcage as she mounted her broom. Her fingertips felt sweaty against the smooth wooden handle. She kicked off just lightly enough to hover and sink into the cushioning charm under her, bracing her boots against the foot rests.

"And finally, joining us for the first time ever- The youngest Hogwarts Seeker in over a century-"

The crowd seemed to draw a collective breath.

"DAHLIA EVANS-POTTER!"

She'd have to do something for the twins. She had no doubt they told their dormmate to include her most familiar surname. Despite what anyone said, they really were quite sweet when they wanted to be.

The first-year left the launching room like a shot, zooming out and up, over the blur of green, beige and brown, leaving her fluttering, gastrointestinal Rhopalocera behind her.

An almighty cry went up from Gryffindor, quickly echoed by most of the visitors' stands. She even spied a bedsheet painted with their rampant lion flashing between scarlet and gold. Feeling giddy, she buzzed the sections between Slytherin and her own house, finding Sirius, Remus, Hermione and Neville in the crowd wearing jerseys printed with her name.

And there, right in their midst sat Safiya and Dan, looking both glowingly proud and not a little green at the sight of their daughter zooming around at seventy miles per hour.

Dahlia grimaced. She'd never hear the end of it, now.

Slytherin's team met them at the centre of the pitch, fifty feet up, at Madam Hooch's whistle. Wood and Flint made a show of trying to break the other's fingers in their handshake, and with a shrill, metallic screech, the game began.

"And Johnson immediately takes possession!"

Dahlia rocketed into the air per Wood's strategy to stay out of the action as long as possible in an effort to both throw her rival, a slim dishwater-blonde boy named Terence Higgs, and remove some of the possibility a bigger player might decide to take her out.

"She's really whizzing along, excellent play to keep the quaffle from Marcus Flint- Perfect reverse pass to Spinnet. Good job on Wood pulling her up from last year's reserves- Back to Johnson, Bell-"

Both bludgers belted toward Katie, and the seeker winced as she narrowly rolled and dropped the quaffle.

"Slytherins take possession," the commentator continued a little sourly. "Flint takes it round, he's gonna- No! He's stopped in a brilliant move by Wood. Gryffindor retakes the quaffle. Bell- Spinnet- Bell- OUCH! Oh, that's going to leave a mark. Bell takes a bludger to the back of the head as Spinnet and Johnson move the quaffle up the field. Bell recovers- She executes a nice dive, interrupting Flint's attempt at a Parkin's Pincer, followed quickly by a bludger from one of the Weasley's- Been dorming with them for years and still can't tell which one."

Dahlia paused in her scan for the elusive flash of gold and laughed when the boys flanked Flint's chasers. They volleyed one bludger back and forth across the field, forcing the Slytherins to dive and dodge erratically as the iron balls of infinite pain homed in on the green-clad players with each pass.

"Spinnet dodges a counter attempt by Slytherin beater Reginald Selwyn, Bell in possession- Passes to Johnson- JOHNSON SCORES! TEN-NAUGHT GRYFFINDOR!"

"Yes!" Dahlia grinned and flew a celebratory loop-the-loop to the sound of her house and most of Hufflepuff screaming their delight before returning to her careful scan.

Below, Safiya gripped Dan's hand hard enough to leave marks.

"What happens if she falls?" she fretted, her other hand twiddling anxiously with the gold tassels hanging from her hijab.

Hermione tried to soothe her while internally shouting at her sister for showing off.

"Hooch and most of the professors cast some spells to slow her down and make her landing quite a bit softer, if her team doesn't catch her first," she said with what she hoped sounded like cheerful reassurance. "She's never fallen, though, and she's flown in storms with some really nasty storms."

"STORMS?!"

The crowd's shouts drowned out her shriek. Sirius, Remus and Dan stood along with the rest of their section.

Dahlia had spotted something.

She dove, pressed flat against her broom, arms tucked to reduce drag, her long braid and the split tail of her robes whipping her neck and back. Eighty feet- Fifty- Twenty- Terence Higgs, Slytherin's Seeker, finally noticed it fluttering along over Pucey's right ear, but he started too late. He couldn't reach it before she did.

His captain, however, paid attention.

Flint broke away from the chasers, leaving Katie to score again, and inserted himself directly in her flight path. She pressed on. He'd move, or she'd bury the end of her broom in his gut.

A brief expression of alarm crossed his features followed quickly by a mean grin. Something hurtled into her from the side, and Dahlia screamed in rage and pain.

Her attacker's momentum nearly threw her from her broom, and the Snitch disappeared in the chaos as the tackle jolted her sideways. Rather than fight the bigger chaser's weight, she hooked her knee and gripped with one hand, allowing her body to swing around the shaft of her broom almost 360 degrees, leaving her attacker to fly through the space she previously occupied. She quickly regained her seat while Lee Jordan's indignant invective echoed across the pitch.

"FOUL!"

The cry rang throughout the stands peppered by Slytherin cheers, and Hooch's whistle rang shrilly through the din.

"RED CARD!" Dan howled. "Send him off, ref!"

Sirius, who had been spewing a string of curses so colourful as to make the surrounding students stare, paused in his diatribe.

"What's that?"

"Argh- Football," the father explained as he watched Dahlia skillfully recover.

She looked tiny compared to the rest of them. Even her teammate Bell, who Neville informed him only had a year of seniority above his girls, dwarfed her by a head.

"Referee can show the red card to send a player permanently out of the game," he continued, scrubbing a hand over his closely cropped hair.

Remus frowned.

"Wish we had that. Flint and Montague nearly killed her."

Meanwhile, Hermione gently tried to prise her mother's fingers from her sleeve. She could barely move for the horrified woman's grip.

"Right-" Lee's voice echoed over the spectators' continuing reactions. "After that criminally obvious example of rotten moral fibre-

"Jordan!" McGonagall's voice growled, slightly warped by her distance from Jordan's microphone.

"I meant, now that we've dealt with that transparent and gutter-worthy foul-"

" _Mr Jordan, if you cannot be impartial-!"_

"Fine!" the boy huffed. "Montague barely fails in his 'accidental' attempt at murdering the Gryffindor Seeker, which I'm sure happens all the time to everyone, and Spinnet takes the penalty. She scores, and play continues."

Safiya wasn't sure the game should qualify as 'play,' at least not how these teams performed it. She tried to convince her muscles to relax as her daughter made her way back above the action, but below her, the Slytherin chasers took up a more physical strategy.

"Flint- Montague- Pucey- Flint again- Close save by Wood!" Lee's called. "Bell back in possession, Johnson- Argh, that's a cheap shot by Flint. Johnson drops the quaffle- Good hit by one of the Weasleys, and Pucey fails to take possession. Spinnet, Johnson, Spinnet, Bell! GRYFFINDOR SCORES AGAIN! THIRTY-NAUGHT! TAKE THAT YOU SLIMY, CHEATING-"

" _MR JORDAN!"_

Sirius barked a laugh.

"I like that kid," he snickered to Dan's approval. "Remind me to send a case of butterbeer to him, after this."

"RIGHT! Fine- Sorry, Professor. Ahem. Flint and Montague take the quaffle, Pucey leads them in a Hawkshead attacking formation. Another excellent hit by one of the Weasleys, Montague fumbles. Pucey goes for it- No, there's another bludger by the second Weasley. Gryffindor takes the quaffle. Johnson leads- Another beautifully executed reverse pass- And- YES! Porskoff ploy! Johnson moves as if to score and drops the quaffle to Spinnett, and she scores! _Forty_ -naught."

He sounded incredibly smug.

Flint retaliated by nearly tackling the blonde witch from the air when the quaffle returned to play.

Dahlia watched with a moue of frustration as she dodged yet another bludger. Rather than hit them toward the chasers, Selwyn and Avery had apparently decided to take her out of the equation in an effort to give their team a better chance at catching up. Fred and George intercepted their next attempts at killing the Seeker, and both missiles impacted Avery's chest, sending him off his broom and to the ground below, where a subtle shimmer flashed into existence. Suddenly, he wasn't falling at all, but floating at Hooch's side.

"Ha!" George grinned, hovering beside her. "Doing all right there, Dahli?"

"Well enough," she replied with a tight smile. "Haven't seen it again."

"You'll get it," Fred called up at her. "Just don't fall in the meantime!"

The boys sped off, leaving her to continue her search. Below, a loud groan interspersed by cheering signalled Slytherin's first goal.

"Come on," the witch muttered to herself, flying figure-eights over the field while she squinted for any sign of gold.

Twice, she thought she might have spotted it only to realise the reflection belonged to someone's watch or broom nameplate.

"Ugh- Penalty awarded to Gryffindor for that nasty foul. Spinnett's got a nasty nosebleed, but she's still flying as Slytherin scores again. Fifty-twenty, Gryffindor still leading."

Dahlia barely registered his voice. Her gaze focused in on a brief glint-

 _Yes!_

She dove again, interrupting the Slytherins' next play and sending the green-clad chasers scattering as she shot by in a scarlet blur. Dahlia felt the wind shift around her and knew Higgs followed close on her tail. He might have had longer reach, but she was smaller. No one on the pitch could match her in a contest of pure speed.

"Potter's definitely seen something! Getting dangerously close to the ground, now- Higgs and Potter are neck and neck- Less than twenty feet- Fifteen- Pull up, pull up-!"

Higgs spun away ten feet from the ground, while she sank back onto her feet, pushing down on the tail of the broom with her heels to pull out of the dive scant inches from the grass, skimming the lawn, only sacrificing a little speed as she sped forward, flying parallel to the ground.

"Merlin, but that was one hell of a dive! That girl can _fly_! Meanwhile, Flint takes advantage of Wood's distraction and scores, once! Twice! Fifty-forty-"

McGonagall apparently couldn't bring herself to reprimand the boy for his language when she herself leaned over the railing in the teacher's box, shouting her Seeker on. Her voice got lost among the thousands of others shrieking from the stands while everyone watched on their feet, fighting to see her from a vantage better suited to play at fifty feet up.

The snitch darted forward, and she pushed her broom to its limits, accelerating rapidly. Her quarry changed direction suddenly, zig-zagging up and back towards her.

Dahlia acted on instinct. One foot hooked under its rest, she slid the other forward until she stood on her handle like a surfer. A little pressure on her back heel angled the broom up by a smidge, and her fingers wrapped around the cold, struggling metal sphere.

" _POTTER HAS THE SNITCH!_ That's it, mates!" Lee whooped, standing with the microphone clutched to his face. "Evans-Potter pulls out of a dive for the history books, _stands_ on her broom and catches the Snitch. Gryffindor wins at two hundred points to forty!"

Dahlia exhaled an ecstatic laugh. She heard someone shouting her name: not _Potter_ , or even _Evans-Potter_ , but _Dahlia_ echoed across the wide pitch.

" _DAH-LI-A! DAH-LI-A! DAH-LI-A!"_

Six sets of arms found her before she could properly land, engulfing her only to yield her to more familiar holds. Dan, Safiya, Hermione, Neville, Remus and Sirius pulled her away from the back-slaps, hugs and handshakes.

The Seeker beamed back at her family with the Snitch still clutched in her fist, swallowing frequently around a catch in her throat. In that moment all the things weighing on her - Fudge, losing her duelling space, and being away from Hermione more often than not - fell away. None of it mattered so long as she could come back to that feeling, in those arms.

* * *

Author's Notes

Thanks everyone who reviewed, faved or followed. Y'all are fantastic. Please, let me know what you think if you've got a sec. I really enjoy hearing from you, and it definitely helps to keep me posting regularly.

I'm picking up a lot of overtime at work, so no promises of a post next week. My review alert gives me a boost when I'm drained, so do say hi if you liked, didn't like, or have a question about something.


	17. Home for the Holidays

Disclaimer: All you recognize from the original work belong to J.K. Rowling and her respective distributors, producers, and publishers. I play in the universe to stretch my writing muscles and to entertain my readers and myself. I do not profit from this work.

* * *

Chapter Seventeen: Home for the Holidays

* * *

The weeks between the Gryffindor v. Slytherin match and winter holidays sped by as if on fast-forward for Hermione. The match had been exactly what everyone needed to work out much of the castle's worst pent-up aggression, and in the advent end-of-term exams, the student body and professors became consumed by revising. Hermione, Tracey, Daphne, Dahlia and Neville spent much of that time in the library, since even Wood had to back off practices for his own studies. Every evening found them gathered around a table on the second floor of the library, in the very back of the fiction section, with their books and things spread out across the spacious surface meant for twice the number of bodies.

With the hostility toward her reduced to glares and silent disdain, Dahlia finally allowed herself to relax a little and enjoy the relative peace and quiet, while everyone else tread lightly around Hermione for fear of disturbing her meticulously organised and colour-coded notes, cue cards, and books. Her housemates seemed amused by her manic intensity. Neville hid on his godsister's other side, quietly practicing wand movements and mouthing incantations. He still had a tendency to overpower his spells after starting his magical education with an uncooperative wand.

Outside their warm, mostly serene haven, the castle underwent a wonderful transformation. Snow covered the lawns, and the perfect blanket captured Hogwarts' foot traffic in damp indentations. Most led to the greenhouses, where Professor Sprout's students largely spent their time insulating seedlings against the chill beyond their glass-roofed homes or casting sunshine charms to give the plants a bit of a boost while the sky remained stubbornly grey and overcast. Hagrid dragged twelve towering fir trees into the Great Hall, and professors and prefects wove magic and handicrafts to decorate each in unique splendour. Some dripped with charmed ice cicles that sparkled in the candlelight, and others featured living, breathing fairies, whose bodies lit up according to their moods and respective breeds. Professor McGonagall transfigured bits of wood into moving, sometimes speaking, ornaments. Tiny lions chased reindeer over the evergreen boughs, and little drummers tapped out a march to the students' delight. Professor Flitwick charmed unpoppable bubbles in which dreamlike figures danced or played.

Fred and George charmed mistletoe to freeze people until they managed to kiss someone (it only had to be a peck), and with Dahlia's help, potioned a batch of biscuits for Malfoy from a 'secret admirer' that made him fart to the tune of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" for nearly two hours before he managed to get an antidote from Professor Snape.

Hermione had almost choked on her afternoon tea when it started, and even Professor McGonagall couldn't quite hold in her mirth at the mean-spirited boy's humiliating predicament.

The twins offered to prank Malcolm Stebbins for her, too, but Dahlia declined. She didn't think him worth her time. Hermione had beamed at her with pride, and the smile softened the twinge of vindictiveness that still lingered at the back of Dahlia's mind. Of course, the twins went ahead and did it anyway just out of boredom, except Stebbins belched his way through a carol about Father Christmas.

Finally, the last day of autumn term arrived, and the denizens of Hogwarts descended into a frenzy of packing and gift-giving. Hermione exchanged presents with Daphne and Tracey the night before the holiday began, while Dahlia and Neville left the twins' gifts at the foot of their beds. They'd decided to stay at school, since their parents were going to be in Romania visiting their brother, Charlie. Nev got them a bunch of Zonko's products suggested by Sirius and Remus, while Hermione gave them assorted muggle gags. Dahlia, however, had expressed her gratitude to the boys a little differently.

Armed with magic and money on top of her knowledge, she found herself able to give gifts independent of anyone else's funds or means. Whereas Hermione had revised during every spare moment available leading up to the end of term, Dahlia only drilled to ensure she knew everything on the autumn syllabus. Between their independent studies and additional practical sessions with the professors Quirrel and Flitwick, it only took a few days' worth of afternoon study sessions. While her sister kept her nose pressed to her notes or books, she referenced Lily Evans' journal to create something she thought the twins would really appreciate.

After purchasing two hinged wooden boxes and a few pads of red and green sticky notes, she painstakingly copied instructions she'd adapted from her mother's diary for stickable, rune-based enchantments. Lily Evans had devised a recipe for ink based on the polyjuice potion that would, when combined with the appropriate spells and applications, use the blood or hair of its target to power runes for small enchantments, wards or spells without the use of stone or wood. Dahlia had found it completely by chance while trying to remove whatever Lily did to black out the last ten pages of her journal. At first, it had just looked like felt-tip pen, but nothing she, Hermione, or Sirius did could lift it from the page. Dahlia had felt almost ready to write it off as a project for another time when she spotted the tidy scrawl in the bottom right hand corner of a mostly black page.

 _Permanent Rune Ink for Nonconductive Materials - Patent number MoMUK-XXXVII_

 _Potential Uses: Temporary warding and spell effects. On-the-go enchantments, magigrenades, emergency wand-making._

To her amazement, the recipe that followed had been surprisingly manageable despite the incredible applications she imagined for it. Figuring out how to use the runes to create specific spell effects presented a harder challenge, but she located the methodology her mother used from one of her fourth-year journals. So, working from Lily's notes, she was able to piece together the process by which the written word could be turned to magic.

Each of the twins' boxes held one glass ink pot filled with hair- or blood-ready potion, a recipe card to make more with a table of spell types and recommended catalyst (hair or blood) on the back, a self-refilling fountain pen tied to a corresponding empty mixing phial (for individualized mayhem), a slim pocket-sized notebook filled with rune sequences Dahlia had already tested, and sticky-notes. The first-year also took the liberty of making the first page of each into a different spell. She smirked at the thought of them trying those out. Knowing the boys, they'd probably just tag one on Percy or Ron. As an afterthought, she added a card with safety precautions and recommendations for ingredient-handling. She'd have felt bad if they hurt themselves trying to come up with new things, which they inevitably would. Last, she learned a spell to burn _Stick-a-Spell Starter Kit_ on the lid of each wooden box, beneath which she wrote _For Mischief-Makers of the Highest Calibre_ in a smaller font. In the end, it had been a very satisfying project. The work had gone a long way to keeping her occupied.

The snow deepened across the grounds, and the lake froze solid. Exams came and went. Hermione stressed about whether she missed questions Dahlia knew for a fact the girl could answer in her sleep. Finally, wands and luggage in hand, the girls and Neville bordered the black and red steam engine for London.

* * *

Dan couldn't help smiling while he watched Sirius impatiently shift from one foot to the other as he looked over shorter heads in search of their kids. He could hardly believe how much his small family had expanded in just a year. Even with the spectre of the so-called Children's Protection Act hanging over their heads, Dan had never been happier.

Finally, a familiar head of wild, springy curls came into view, and he joined Sirius in waving enthusiastically to grab Hermione's attention. Augusta Longbottom rose gracefully from her seat at the bistro table behind him, and the adults moved to meet the trio through the milling crowd.

"Hello loves," he grinned, wrapping Dahlia, then Hermione in a strong hug before shaking Neville's hand. "How was the trip home?"

"Relaxing," Hermione answered.

"Long and boring," Dahlia said at the same time. "Except Trevor ate a chocolate frog. It was a little disturbing."

"Ha!" Dan laughed.

He loved hearing about all the odd little things that happened with magic, even if it was for something as simple as candy.

A deep croak echoed from the glass terrarium clutched between Neville's hands. Sirius eyed the amphibian with distrust before taking his turn to hug the girls, adding a kiss on top of Dahlia's head.

While the girls caught them up on the goings on at school, their voices occasionally joined by Neville's soft elaboration, the adults began cutting a path through the throng until they emerged beyond the platform's hidden barrier.

"Thank you for taking tea with me," Madam Longbottom said once Dan and Sirius finished loading the girls' things into the silver sedan's boot. "I must admit it was far more pleasant to have company while I waited."

"I'd never dream of declining any invitation of yours, Gussie," Sirius shamelessly flirted.

The forbidding witch harrumphed.

"I should hope not," she replied, completely unaffected by the young man's charming smile. "Dorea raised you better than that. So, when should we expect you?"

"Shall we say the evening of the 2nd?" Dan suggested. "Our ship should pull into port early that morning."

Madam Longbottom gave an accepting nod, bid them goodbye, shrank Neville's trunk, tucked it into her purse, and, one hand on her grandson's shoulder, disappeared with a muted _crack!_

"Daddy, what's going on?" Hermione prodded, looking between the suddenly shifty adults with a frown.

Sirius seemed close to bouncing in place.

"It's a surprise!" he crowed. "Come on. Remus and Saf are waiting for us."

Dan chuckled and helped him shoo the girls into the back seat. They exchanged a series of glances, both too inquisitive to let it drop.

"Padfoot?" Dahlia tried again after the car pulled onto the M25. "Are we going away somewhere?"

"Maaaybe," the wizard grinned, twisting in his seat to waggle his eyebrows at the girls. "You'll see."

Despite their many attempts to wheedle more information out of them, the men apparently shared too much amusement at their impatience to let even a clue slip as to their destination. The ride didn't last as long as Dahlia thought it should, however. After only twenty minutes, their sedan pulled into a covered car park, and the men got out. Dahlia and Hermione followed along, looking around curiously in an attempt to suss out their destination.

"Why are we at a hotel?" Hermione asked when Dan swiped a keycard beside a nondescript door leading from the multilevel garage.

They filed into a blandly decorated corridor lined with doors and low-pile carpeting. The dentist made a noncommittal sound. A minute or two later they arrived at door numbered 501. The keycard lock made a pleasant beeping sound after a couple of failed attempts, and the moment the door opened, the girls found themselves enveloped in Safiya's embrace.

She tucked one daughter under each of her arms and led them inside, leaving the luggage to the men while Hermione began regaling her with tales of their end-of-term exams at high speed. Dahlia, meanwhile, peeked around her hold to take in their unfamiliar surroundings.

She only vaguely remembered the inn at which she and the Covingtons had met the Reverend Joe Morgan, but she knew it hadn't been quite so nice.

The door opened into a combined sitting room and kitchenette, from which three doors led off to what she assumed must be bedrooms, based on the furniture she spied from her vantage.

Safiya finally released her for Remus to wrap her in a light hug, and Hermione's recap of their last few days paused as Dan cleared his throat. The adults in the room all smiled in the smug sort of way brought on by a shared secret. Still, they didn't say anything until after a takeaway delivery person knocked on the door, and Dan began disassembling boxes to make sharing easier.

"Well?" Hermione finally prompted, losing her patience. "Where are we going? We're obviously not headed home."

"We're doing things a little differently this year, girls, but I think you'll still enjoy it," Safiya assured them, pulling her youngest close and pressing a kiss to her cheek.

Dahlia turned to wrap her arms tightly around her mother's soft waist.

"Daddy and I decided we need a bit of a getaway, you included, so this year, we're going to take a proper holiday abroad," she explained while the family gathered around the coffee table to share Chinese food.

"We're going to Disney World!"

Dan groaned and punched Sirius in the shoulder, but the grinning wizard didn't falter in his exuberance.

"Not Disney _land_ Paris?" Hermione clarified.

"No," Dan pouted. "I was going to keep it an utter surprise aside from 'somewhere warm with a beach' but Gumby here-"

Sirius shrugged.

"Already spoiled that. So, yeah- We're going to Disney World," he said a little anticlimactically. "In Florida."

Hermione squealed like Christmas had come early and launched herself at her father, her excitement overflowing to Sirius, who linked arms with her to skip in a circle around Remus, who watched it all with a resigned expression painted across his features. It took them several moments to realize Dahlia hadn't reacted at all except to frown.

"What's the matter, Prongslet?" Remus asked gently. "Even I'm a little excited about a holiday, and I have to bunk with this idiot."

Sirius pouted although Moony's mild tone held only exasperated affection.

"It's not that, it's just-" her cheeks flushed and her voice faded to a mumble. "I haven't a passport or anything."

Safiya chuckled and scooted a little closer to her, smoothing a hand over her messy black locks.

"Don't be silly, little love. Of course we got one for you," she smiled. "We had one made as soon as your adoption papers finalised."

"And _I_ got you a passport for the magical side of things," Sirius added in, looking pleased with himself.

Dahlia finally broke into a wide smile, and she let Hermione pull her into dancing around the hotel suite, to the adults' amusement. Between their long train ride that morning and their heavy meals of savory chicken and lo mein, the girls grew drowsy and eventually succumbed to Safiya's suggestion they head to bed.

* * *

Hundreds of miles away, a short, balding man with twitchy, watery eyes and yellow, crooked teeth stepped from the void to appear before an imposing gate of iron wrought with coiling, sharply thorned roses and embellished with an enormous _M_ where its halves kissed.

Before he could even take another restorative breath, a tall wizard with platinum hair apparated with a sharp _crack!_ beyond the forbidding barrier, his wand trained on his visitor. An electric green glow encompassed its tip, barely held from striking the twitchy little man from the earth.

"My, my, my," he drawled. "Peter Pettigrew back from the dead. Just in time for Yule."

His shrewd, icy grey eyes narrowed.

"Show me."

With a huff, Pettigrew rolled up the left sleeve of his shabby, stolen robes to reveal an ugly tattoo. The elegant wizard's jaw clenched at the sight of it, and Peter grinned.

Only a few short weeks ago, it had been an angry pink scar, but now, shadowy grey interrupted the pale flesh of his inner arm, just as he knew it would Lucius'.

The blonde's sneer hardened at the image, and although the spell-light faded away, he kept his wand raised.

"Why are you here?"

"I found our Lord," Pettigrew announced, the words tinged with a mixture of pride and fear. "Or He found me. Either way, I know you felt Him, too, and I'm here on His behest. He requires the the House of Malfoy's service."

A blank mask settled over the wizard's face, and the gate swung gracefully outward without so much as a squeek. Malfoy waved his guest ahead of him and sheathed his wand in the elegant black cane held loosely at his side. Before Pettigrew could proceed too far, however, he grabbed hold of his shoulder and abruptly side-alonged him to a tastefully appointed drawing room.

"You've seen Him?" he demanded lowly as the animagus regained his breath, clutching his chest as if every inhale burned like fiendfyre. "Face to face?"

"Yes," Pettigrew wheezed, pouring himself into a velvety chair without invitation.

Malfoy remained standing.

"What does our Lord require, then?"

The wizard's voice barely rose above a whisper and maintained careful neutrality. Pettigrew snickered at him. He had never really liked Malfoy, and felt sure the sentiment was mutual.

"A diary," Peter replied. "He said he left one in your safekeeping?"

The calculating expression on Lucius' face deepened as he sank gracefully into a throne-like wingback.

"I was given very clear instructions I was to entrust it to no one aside from him," he murmured. "Surely you cannot expect me to defy such a directive?"

The animagus grimaced.

"He was very clear I was to take it back to Him," he said a little nervously.

"And while I would gladly grant your request, I've no guarantee it would find its way to its owner," Malfoy neutrally reasoned. "Perhaps we might arrange a meeting in which I could present it myself."

Pettigrew squirmed in his seat for a moment before giving a curt nod.

"I'll inform Him of your answer, then," he agreed sourly.

He watched longingly as a snifter of brandy appeared on the marble-topped side table at Lucius' elbow. The man took a sip and considered his guest critically for several quiet moments. He made no offer to summon one for Peter.

"Was there anything else?"

"He would like you to harass the Potter girl," the animagus related. "Whatever you can do to make her life uncomfortable. No physical harm is to come to her, however."

"For what purpose?"

"I'm not suicidal enough to question Him," Pettigrew said with a shudder. "We'll be raised above all others once he returns to the public eye. I assume everything we do is for that reward, and that's enough, for me. "

"Of course I shall see our Lord's will done," Lucius finally agreed. "I look forward to receiving His summons."

* * *

Hermione marvelled at the luminous globe slowly rotating at the centre of the room. Constructed from coloured light and magic, it displayed flashing beacons here and there, indicating, she was told, landing portkeys detected by the International Confederation of Wizards' worldwide travel commission. Witches and wizards milled around it, their shoes clapping on the marble floor and their voices mingling as a dull buzz.

Upon their arrival, the Grangers, Sirius and Remus had been shuffled across the main area to their departure zone, delineated by colour-coded seats. These formed a square in front of a wide window overlooking downtown London, before which stood a nearby pedestal marked _MACUSA Departures_ manned by a surly wizard. Hermione and Dahlia sat between their parents with Sirius and Remus opposite. The Slytherin watched everything around her with avid interest. Dahlia, however, remained slumped against Safiya's shoulder, half asleep.

She checked her wristwatch again and frowned.

"Sorry, pup," Remus murmured apologetically. "I feel bad for dragging you all here, early."

Mrs Granger snorted.

"Nonsense, and it's hardly your fault the rules are set the way they are. It's completely unreasonable they should expect you to present yourself so early, go through all those extra security checks-" she glared at the wizard posted behind the pedestal. "As if you were some criminal. It's disgusting how they treat you."

He winced and shook his head.

"Considered dark creatures, remember?" he said bitterly.

"Well, it's wrong," she said.

Hermione nodded emphatically, and her mass of curls bobbed with her.

"Honestly, if they could just leave the probity-probe out, I wouldn't mind so much," the lycanthrope said with a wince, and Sirius grimaced. "They're not very gentle."

"It's like they've never heard of the lubrication charm," the animagus grumbled. "Arseholes. The lot of them."

Dan broke out into muffled snickers, and Safiya flushed, to Hermione's bemusement.

"What would they need lubrication for?" she wondered aloud.

Her father broke and loosed a loud laugh, earning several glares from fellow travellers and the transportation personnel. He settled down at Safiya's encouragement, and the family returned to relative silence until finally, at 10:50 a.m., the wizard assigned to their departure area rang a bell.

"All those departing for New York, please stand. Anyone requiring assistance shrinking their luggage should present it now. Departures begin in five minutes."

"That's us," Sirius said with palpable excitement. "Everyone have their bags?"

Hermione patted her coat pocket, grinning at the feeling of her miniaturized suitcase through the fabric. Safiya gave a nod, and Dahlia, finally rousing with her mum's gentle nudging, made a thumbs-up.

A moment later, the wizard came round with what resembled a small silver hoola hoop.

"Three Grangers, Potter, Black, one Lupin?" he said with a bit of a nose-wrinkle for Remus.

Sirius glared at him.

"Yes," Dan said curtly. "We're ready."

"Good. Everyone grab hold, then-"

He waited until everyone grabbed hold before drawing his wand.

"Keep a good, tight grip, there," he cautioned the children, in particular. "One, two- _Portus!"_

With a terrible feeling of being hooked behind the navel, their feet left the ground, and the world spun around them. Hermione heard her father yell, and Safiya groaned. She clenched her eyes shut in an attempt to fight back the nausea, and just before she thought she'd lose her breakfast, the earth slammed up to meet them, and she found herself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.

"Welcome to Ellis Island, international entry station under the Magical Congress of the United States of America," a pleasant voice said amid sounds of discomfort. "It is 6:01 a.m. if anyone needs to adjust their watches."

Hermione rubbed her elbow, which had impacted rather roughly against the shining, rusty red-tiled floor. Her family organised themselves around her while she surveyed their arrival area.

An arched ceiling of deep blue interrupted by polished bronze stars soared overhead. Beneath it, interspersed at the top of each long wall, half-moon constructed from glass blocks refracted the light, creating a bright glow throughout the space. Below, dark, rust-red tiles shone from a recent polish. Her family had arrived in a cubicle of mahogany and brass cordoned off from the rest of the hall by scarlet velvet rope, behind which stood a tall, blonde woman dressed in a dark blue pantsuit with MACUSA's bald eagle insignia on her lapel.

She produced a frosted white, rectangular glass pane with rounded edges. Hermione tried to see around her father's elbow as the witch rapped her wand against its surface.

"Everyone in one piece?" the witch smiled, revealing white, perfectly even teeth before moving on. "Great. I'm Jennifer, and I'm your customs and immigration officer."

She paused to look at her tablet.

"O.K. I'm showing you've booked a connection for Orlando leaving later. Is that right?"

Sirius stepped to the front of the group, giving her a charming grin. Safiya, Hermione noticed, rolled her eyes.

"That's right," he confirmed. "Taking the kids to Disneyworld."

Jennifer's blue eyes lit up.

"Oh, that sounds like fun," she grinned, looking at the girls. "Keep an eye out for the magical attractions. I heard they just added onto the no-maj stuff, recently, too."

"Thanks," Sirius said, raising a brow at that. "We definitely will."

"Well, I'm sure you'll have a blast. So, let's finish this up and get you on your way. Passports, please?"

They all passed over the peacock blue books, and she flipped through each methodically, pressing the tip of her wand to a page in each to certify their arrival. Their muggle documentation came next, and then she passed out temporary wand permits to each of them.

"These are valid until January 1st. Any extension will need be filed through MACUSA headquarters," she explained smoothly. "Kids are allowed to use theirs in magical areas; however, any non-emergency use in non-magical areas will be considered a violation of the permit. In that event, an Auror will be summoned to investigate, and, if we have to, confiscate the wand until your departure."

"Very sensible," Safiya acknowledged. "We'll be sure to keep an eye on the girls."

The witch brushed imaginary lint from her skirt and made an approving noise.

"Great. Now, Mr. Lupin, your documentation indicates you suffer from Lycanthropy. Will you be needing wolfsbane potion or accommodations while you're here? We have specially designated facilities to ensure your and the public's safety during the full moon."

He smiled and fished through his wallet for a moment before producing a laminated card.

"I spent some time here a few summers back. I've already booked my stay for the 21st. I've got my potion, already."

"Excellent," the blonde hummed after glancing at the identification. "Then if you don't need anything un-shrunk, you can follow me to collect your connection portkey."

She pressed the point of her wand against her lapel pin, and the velvet rope smoothly withdrew. Walking briskly, Jennifer led them past several identical arrival areas to usher them through a door labelled _Domestic Departures_.

"All right. Johnny'll take care of you from here. Have a nice day."

"Thank you," Safiya and Sirius chorused before turning to Johnny, a balding man behind a desk.

The wall at his back immediately drew the girls' attention. The entire thing consisted of pigeon holes in which was housed the strangest collection of bits and bobs they'd ever seen. Half-shredded cat toys, odd shoes, a fizz can, a bent, rusty spoon, a string of plastic beads- Neither could make heads nor tails of it.

"Picking up domestic portkey for Orlando, noon today?" Sirius rattled off.

Johnny nodded absently and tapped his wand on the counter in front of him. As if overtaken by invisible termites, words spread across wood, listing their names beside a series of symbols Hermione could not comprehend.

"Pre-paid, got it," the wizard nodded before pulling a faded, candy-striped pillowcase from one of the cubbies. "Here ya go. Make sure you're in a building where no no-majes can see ya. Departs promptly at 12. Yous guys have a nice one."

The first-year's eyebrows rose at that, but Sirius shuffled them along before she could ask the man, so she turned her curious gaze on the wizards.

"They just let you take it from anywhere?"

"It's tied to a destination, not a departure point, unless it's two-way," Remus explained. "Just have to make sure you're not caught on camera. It's simple enough. Most people depart from private residences or magical properties, anyway."

A few minutes of walking through disused, dusty corridors later, they emerged in an abandoned reception room that looked like it might have belonged to a hospital at some point in its history.

Two trips of side-along apparation, one lunch of wonderfully cheap and satisfying pizza, one portkey, and one check-in later, Hermione and Dahlia collapsed onto their respective beds in their private room, looking up at the whimsical, coral-like glass chandelier that made up the main light fixture in the room of their resort. They had both shed their jumpers a long while back, and Dahlia lazily shimmied out of her stockings. A muttered levitation spell made them float over to her suitcase, which sat on the luggage rest at the foot of her bed. The balcony doors on the far side of Hermione's bed stood open. A balmy sea breeze swept the gauzy, layered curtains of sheer, pale blue and green, making them wave and swell, mimicking the movement licking the beach below.

"Can you believe we're under the lagoon?" she hummed

"Mm. The false sunlight's odd, for me, but yeah. It's pretty incredible. Who else but wizards would think about hiding a magical resort underwater, complete with white-sand beach and waterslides?" Hermione murmured sleepily. "We ought to unpack and go swimming."

Her sister rolled onto her side and held back a giggle at the girl's hair. The humidity had turned the normally bushy mass of kinky brown curls into an absolute riot of frizz that stood up around her head while she lay on her back.

"Too tired. You know, we've been up for fifteen hours, and I definitely didn't go to sleep early yesterday, as much as I tried," the Gryffindor snorted. "It can wait till after I've had a kip. Besides, we aren't expected anywhere until dinner, right?"

Hermione made a sound of vague agreement.

"Still having nightmares?"

Dahlia's lazy smile faded, and she loosed a long sigh.

"I'm _fine_."

"You're _not_."

The Slytherin sat up and climbed into the girl's bed. The subject of her worries protested half-heartedly, but yielded easily enough to Hermione's adjustments until Dahlia lay with her head on the older girl's lap. Perpetually ink-stained fingers dragged through the her long, messy locks.

In the bright light of the fake sun streaming through their balcony door, it was impossible to miss the dark lavender rings shadowing Dahlia's closed eyes. Her face looked thinner than Hermione remembered it being, making her already delicate features pixie-ish and sharp. Her normally peachy skin had paled to a dull, almost greyish ivory.

"Have you been journaling?"

"Yeah," the Gryffindor said softly.

"Do you put down everything on your mind, or do you censor yourself?"

She was quiet for while. Gulls called and squawked, punctuating the silence between them.

"Of course I do," Dahlia muttered. "I try not to, but sometimes… Sometimes it feels like if I admit it to someone else, it's real. I'm going mad, Maia."

"Won't you talk to me about it?" Hermione pleaded softly. "I want to help. You know I won't think any less of you. You're… You mean a lot more to me than I think most blood-siblings do to one another, based on what I've witnessed."

Her hands kept on stroking Dahlia's inky hair. She didn't think her nearly whispered admission of worry would inspire anything different than her who-knew-how-many attempts since November 1st, but the petite witch opened her eyes.

"I keep dreaming about this man I don't know," she muttered, not meeting her gaze. "I've told Dr Pathapati about him, but not about what happens in the dream. It's never the same, either. Sometimes he just sits there, cowering and talking, but I can never remember what he says. Other times, he's being crucioed and just screams for ages, and it's like my ears are bleeding for how loud it is."

The girl shuddered, and one of her hands caught Hermione's. Her lower lip trembled.

"I-" she continued haltingly, looking at anything but the girl staring down at her, warm brown eyes full of concern. "I _enjoy_ it in the dream. Hearing him shriek like that, even though it physically hurts _me_ , too. I hate the man, too. I don't know him, I have no idea where I remember his face from that I can see it so clearly, but I despise him, almost as much as I hate Scabior and Fudge's people."

Hermione's eyebrows furrowed.

"That sounds just awful," she murmured.

A strange, nauseous expression crossed her sister's face.

"That's not it, though," Dahlia admitted darkly. "The way I make him hurt in the dream- I want to do that to almost _everyone_ lately, except the family, you know? Someone ran into me on accident a few days ago, even apologised for it, but the first thing I thought about was hexing them till they cried. It was just for a second, and then I felt terrible about it, but it happened, and it's gotten worse. I can barely sleep. I keep wandering around at night without even thinking about it until I get back to the common room, and it's nearly dawn, again."

A few furious, fearful tears slid spilled past the boundary of her thick eyelashes. Hermione didn't speak. She just wiggled out from under Dahlia's head and scooted down to wrap her in a tight hug.

For the first time in what felt like forever, the little Gryffindor let go her death-grip on her emotions, and she sobbed into the older girl's skirt until, exhausted and blotchy, she fell asleep. Her sister remained there, letting Dahli cling to her for a while after, lips pursed into an irate, pale line. Only when her shallow, rough breaths smoothed to quiet snores did she carefully extricate herself, grab one of their heavy brass room keys off a seashell-shaped dish by the door, and seek out Sirius and Remus.

They'd reported little to no success in their efforts to make the truth about Fudge's Act known. She might have been able to chase away Dahlia's nightmares, but at the very least she could reduce the amount of hostility directed at her. Her eyes narrowed.

 _A day will come_ , she promised herself, _when the people determined to get fat off of others' pain and beat people down get theirs, and I won't wait for someone else to see it done._

* * *

Author's Notes

A bit more reasonable in length (at least for my schedule) than the last few posts, but I hope it's long enough to satisfy until next time. I will try to have an update for you next week; however, I'm getting ready to move on top of picking up overtime at work, so no promises.

To everyone who reviewed and consistently make my day, thank you for letting me know your thoughts. I love seeing new follows, and faves, too, so thanks to all of you keeping tabs on this tale.

 **Please comment with things you'd like to see** in the _actually_ magical portions of the most magical place on earth. I'll take your suggestions into consideration and credit folks for ideas I feature. Or, just tell me what you think in general. I love hearing from y'all.

If anyone's been to Disney World in Orlando enough to know the area, the resort Sirius took them to is located under Seven Seas Lagoon. **The first person to guess the name of the resort** I've made up gets a request for an Omake (extra) written by myself, up to 3,000 words long and redeemable anytime.

It just needs to take place in my version of this universe. I'll either post it after Author's Notes or as a separate one-shot, depending on length. I will post the Omake in August, or within 1 month of getting the prompt if after that, because working full time, moving house, and writing all at once don't leave much time for sleep.


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